A New Frontier

I finished reading Girl in Landscape sometime in the night, a fitting time to be reading it, I think. Another "simple" little gem, just the kind I love. I appreciated the genre-bending, the sexual tension, the classic Western elements, the feeling of stepping into the "invisible" role of anthropologist to study human behavior on a new frontier.

I spent a week in NYC during spring break, a lot of it at the Thompkins Square dog run with Huck and Pip's dogs, which also was a study of human behavior on a new frontier. That's the week AJ and I went to Bodies... The Exhibition. I neglected to add in my post about that excursion, which looking back on it seemed to be fixated on the penis, made AJ sick. She was ready to leave after about a half-hour. For me it did the usual, plummet me into an existential crisis. At one point I also experienced some irritation at the damn plastinated basketball player, but who knows where that reaction came from. So much for our grasp of educational opportunities. The conflict of intended and unintended curriculum.

One scenario I like to toy with periodically, and which also connects with the Lethem book, is this: If you were one of a small group of people left on earth after an apocalyptic event, what skills would you bring to the group? What role would you have in the community?

What I have come to realize is that I would like to be one of those guys in Road Warrior who can jerry-rig vehicles, think on their feet and use what's available to survive. But in reality, if it were up to me to carry the new society forward, we would be doomed. Hell, I would have trouble recreating the wheel. Let's face it. And fire starting? Forget it. Practicality has never been a strong point. And I'm not so sure the community would be so supportive of "the entertainer", "the artist", "the philosopher", or "the comedian".

So after I got back from NYC I got sick, another of the plagues which run rampant through institutional spaces, like the one where I work. I was flat in bed for 36 hours, and it turned out to be an upper respiratory virus, the cough of which, the doctor said can last weeks after the other symptoms are gone. Something to look forward to.

So I'm thinking about getting a dog. I have avoided it because I don't want to be tied-down, I don't know if I am a dog-person, I doubt I'm responsible enough to have a dog, along with a myriad of other reasons. I went in my virus-weakened state to the humane society a few days ago and checked out the dogs, and I found some of them quite irritating. Is that a bad sign? I think if I were living in a post-apocalyptic society, a dog would be great. A working dog.

I have a copy of The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen, but I want to spend a little more time in my head with Girl in Landscape. What I really want to read is this: