Elegant Crowbar
Contrary to popular belief, the view of an adult duck from below is not a flurry of activity. Ducks do move often, but it’s not a desperate dog paddle to keep afloat. Ducks focus on positioning. They adjust, pivoting, changing directions just so, correcting their placement. Ducks maintain their smooth movements on the surface of the water with minute movements. Less is more in the duck world (except for quacking), This is how they migrate large distances with ease and appear like perfect, goofy Viking ships gliding along the surface of the water. I know this because I just watched a lot of duck videos on YouTube (the damage I do to my algorithm for you can never be repaid).
The duck is a dumb bird, but it’s not without its elegance. Ducks are, against their will, thought of as funny. Is it the beak? The quacking? Did you know the noise most ducks make is not actually “quacking”? We grossly miscategorize a large variety of vocalizations as “quacking” when ducks actually have a far greater range of expression. Ducks may be the butt of the joke for their appearance and eagerness to eat feed off the floor, but isn’t there something charming about that as well? Something admirable about the adaptability? About speaking your mind, even through a series of not-quacks?
Imagine proto-humans, Neanderthals, missing links. Imagine them meeting a wolf (pre-wolf?), maybe feeding it over time, maybe sharing a kill or a cave. Imagine that wolf realizing that a thing that can stand on two legs and throw rocks could probably save a lot of time in killing things. Think of the leverage, humans are nothing if not elegant crowbars. Now imagine new generations of both animals, a pivot from rocks to pointed sticks, pointed ears to floppy ones (who would get rid of something so cute?) and eventually, less killing and more digging holes in the ground to plant things that are apparently NOT supposed to be dug up and eaten before they’ve sprouted.
The relationship between humans and dogs (post-wolves) is one of the oldest relationships on Earth. A marriage of convenience that’s lasted over 30,000 years and been so life-altering to both creatures that the ancestor of the dog, that first breed that recognized the importance of standing on two legs, went extinct. The modern wolf is to the domesticated dog as the flower vase is to a drinking glass. They’re related but only as far as you can confidently say that they are “related”. Dogs couldn’t know why they are the way they are even if they wanted to. That’s how much we liked floppy ears and curly tails. And in turn the impact dogs have had on us is...well, it’s less genetically destructive, but they’ve certainly had a cultural impact. Would we think about friendship the same way we do without the undying loyalty of a dog to compare too? Would we think about love in the same way? Puppy love is a phrase that’s still tossed around to this day because of how specific the unmotivated, simple, unconditional love dogs demonstrate on a daily basis is.
While the unconditional love is great, I’d venture to say that there are equally important aspirational reasons for dog ownership. Dogs looks good on us. They’re as much replacement children (practice children) as they are presentations of our personalities. We even have cultural norms around this. We often find ourselves thinking or saying that a dog looks just like their owner, that they are their owner in some way. I think it’s clear we choose our dogs (rescued or bred) based off qualities we like. I’d go even farther and suggest that qualities we like are ultimately qualities we would like to portray ourselves. The dog is your son yes, but they’re also your time-shifted avatar in this life, so yeah basically your child. So the big question is, what if this all worked out some other way? What if ducks were dogs?
The duck is intelligent and driven. The duck is flighty, perhaps a bit alien, but nonetheless an animal with a lot of compassion. “Duck, as pet”. Think about it.
I think far too often about the ways we choose to represent themselves, whether that’s the way we talk, dress, think or post about things online. It seems like when we can’t necessarily feel or pinpoint what makes “us” us (whether that means a soul or simply your opinion on sandwich toppings), we have an extra responsibility to be mindful of the way we craft who we are. The older you get, the more context collapses. Time functions differently, it's harder to fall back on the classic “student” identity. You could allow yourself to be defined by your work, but that in its own right has troubling implications. So you think about what you like and don’t like, who you spend time with and who you don’t spend time with and try and find some way of being that sits on the intersection of those Venn diagrams. Maybe you buy a dog or join a gym or a club. You start attending live events. You keep going to church. You unfollow people on social media, maybe make a post about a digital detox, maybe buy a new computer because it will make you more “productive”. Adulthood is contextless, rudderless, without an endpoint save the obvious (though on our good days, far less obvious) biological one. “Duck, as pet” is about the foolish, but oh so understandable desire to be defined by what you own and what you care for. One of those is healthy. One of those is a symptom of our shared illness.
Focusing on the right one is the challenge.
Hell managed to find me over the last two weeks and these duck thoughts were delayed as a result. But they’re here now, so thank you for your patience. I think I’d still like to have something on Sunday and I have a strong feeling it’s going to be media related. We’ll see!
P.S. I returned to Spotify because I miss being able to see what playlists people make. Here’s a song: