Category Archives: Baxter

around the internet on a tuesday

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It's Fashion Week in Paris (since last Wednesday), and I even got to go to a show, thanks to my wonderful friend Elisabeth (who got the fashion scoop of the century: some models take the metro!).  I wore red tights and a grey coat and super high heels and a Japanese magazine took my picture.  Then after the show I put on my flats and turned back into a graduate student.  But oh! the flash and click of it all.  J'adore.

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My dog is at the vet right now getting his teeth cleaned, but they have to use a general anaesthetic for that, and that is apparently not without risks, and so I am very much on edge and having a hard time focusing on this post. I am going to be a very nervous mother, one day.

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You may have seen this already, as it's several days old, but Jeanette Winterson has a great article about Shakespeare & Co in the Guardian.  It's true that it is a wonderful bookshop, but I think all the attention it gets unjustly takes attention away from some really fantastic Anglophone bookshops, like the Village Voice (where every major writer passing through Paris stops and reads), or the San Francisco Book Co, which is a real pleasure to browse in.  But, of course, Shakespeare has the history, and the upstairs library, and Sylvia and Jeanette and Colette (the dog). The library, however, is not really that comfortable; the benches, despite the cushions, are not very welcoming.  You know where is a really good place to curl up with a book in Paris? Sir Winston's.  They have these enormous leather club chairs that are great for hiding out in.  Unfortunately, it's over by the Arc de Triomphe, and so is a bit out of the everyday orbit of othe average Parisian.  Also, they play their music a bit too loudly, in an attempt to chic the place up.

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The Salon du Livre (Paris Book Fair) gets underway on Friday; Mexico is the guest of honor.  Carlos Fuentes, Jordi Soler, and Jorge Volpi will be there, among others.  I, sadly, will not.  But please tell us about it if you do go!

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The Nouvel Observateur has Philippe Sollers on Claude Lanzmann's autobiography [FR]

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Writing: a joy or a chore? Nine authors tell the Guardian how much they love and hate the drudgery of writing.

The Bax

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Yesterday’s post was sad and reflective… nothing like a picture of a puppy to put you right again.

I think I’ll call this shot "Take Me With You."

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Baxter, January 2007

time, part I

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I’ve been in New York for almost a week now, and I have to say, one of the most remarkable aspects of visiting the place I called home for twenty-five years is the way time has become fluid, taking on different forms depending on the container. I’m feeling it differently than on previous visits.  But then, the longer I’m away, the more happens, as is entirely natural, and the more that happens in everyone’s lives, the further away we feel from each other, and my relationships are forced to comprehend the time apart as an emotional as well as a physical distance.  Or not, depending on the kind of relationship in question.

For my three year-old Maltese, who has spent the last six months living with my parents, time seems at once weighty and meaningless.  Dogs have no sense of time, I’m told, and for Baxter this appears to be true.  After an initial frenzied greeting, he soon settled into a calm recognition of the role I play in his life– despite the fact that I was out of it for a sixth of it.  But that first greeting was shot through with, or at least it seemed to me, a very powerful and insistent sense of a long separation.

With my friend from adolescence, who moved to LA not long before I moved to Paris, time was utterly elastic.  A year had elapsed since we’d seen each other last, and so much had happened since, but all that living fit comfortably into our relationship.  We live so far apart, and when I see her even after a year it doesn’t feel like she’s been far away.

Of course the same is true with my immediate family, but there is a stronger sense of distance when in the time since I last saw her my sister has fallen in love and is now five months deep in a not-so-new relationship with a boy from work. I met him for drinks the other night and he’s perfect for her.

As for my vie intime… as I mentioned casually in my last posting, N and I are back together.  And while before the breakup, I couldn’t bear to be away from him for more than a week, now that I’ve contemplated the rest of my life without him, somehow eleven days seems much more feasible.  I’ll be back in Paris next Friday, and I can certainly be patient until then.

But this new experience of time… is worth thinking about.  Stay tuned for part II, in which Maitresse realizes she’s two three years behind [ok, she never really got it to begin with] in her understanding of American politics and pop culture, and
that life is too short to read Erica Jong.

Happy birthday, teddy funnybox!

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Today is my little darling’s 2nd birthday! So even though he can’t read (yet! he’s only 2), I thought I would do a special birthday post for Baxter.

Here he is at 8 weeks, shortly before we got him, when he lived with his mom, dad, sister, and a crazy breeder who made him pose in flowerpots:

Baxter

And here he is recently, modelling the only article of clothing he owns (well, other than a fleece raincoat) because my parents’ house is so highly air-conditioned that we had to bust out the menorah sweater to stop Bax from shaking:

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So which is worse, the pot or the sweater?

He’s a good sport, though.  Just give him a ratty old raccoon puppet and he’s happy for hours.

He loves running around in my neighborhood, and he is my devoted protector, fighting off any pigeons we come across and dogs ten times his size. Yes, I’ll always feel safe with my little David around to fight off the Goliath golden retrievers.

In return, I am a crazy overprotective mother. One of my ex-boyfriends’ friends dropped him once so I’m extremely selective about who I let hold him.  When I went to NY in June, I left him in the care of a couple, two of my good friends, and when I came back, one told me that Baxter slipped out of his collar while they were walking one day and went running off by the Edgar Quinet metro til some kind group of people corralled him. I think my heart stopped beating; I drew a sharp breath and wondered if I didn’t rather wish he hadn’t told me that.

I have certain high opinions about my dog that lead people like my ex, J, to say that I have une relation trop exclusive with him.  That’s ok; I fully admit to treating Baxter like my child; I see nothing wrong with this.  I get extremely angry that I am not allowed to take Baxter into parks that are full of bratty little kids running underfoot and getting in my way; I think Baxter is far cuter and more well-behaved than the majority of kids I know, and so I resent when the same privileged are not extended to him. The argument I get is, well, those are humans and Baxter is a dog. But those kids will grow into obnoxious adults and Baxter will always be sweet and adorable.  I’m sure when I have children I will love them as much as Baxter, and I certainly don’t ignore my boyfriends in favor of my dog (if anything, I think Baxter would complain it’s the other way around!), but it would be erroneous of anyone to think my dog isn’t easily one of the most important parts of my life.  Why? Maybe it’s because I’m a writer, who sits around all day by herself otherwise.  Maybe it’s compounded by the fact that I am a stranger in a strange land, with no real ties to France other than my own obstinance.

The "teddy funnybox" thing came about one day last month when my sister and I were cooing over him, and I burst out with motherly pride that my little dear reminds me of a teddy bear, a bunny, and a little fox, all in one. We played around with different permutations– funny bunnybox, etc.– but finally opted to call him a funnybox.

Anyway.  Happy birthday, funnybox.  I’d get you a cake but I wouldn’t let you eat it.  How ’bout a Greenie?

the cutest thing ever

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Baxter is wagging his tail while he sleeps.  Now that is one happy puppy.  He’s conked out on his pillow, and his tail is tapping the floor behind him.

It kind of reminds me of John Candy in "Spaceballs" ["I'm a Mog! Half man, half dog.  I'm my own best friend"], when his tail lifts up some chick’s skirt and he shrugs and explains that it has a life of its own.  Not that Bax is lifting up any skirts.  Just that, well, he doesn’t seem to be controlling the tail right now.

well, it’s not *that* small…

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I dream of one day having an eat-in kitchen in my apartment– the kind where you can have a nice round table with a pretty tablecloth, and keep a vase with flowers on it, and sit there and have your morning coffee and read the paper as the sun pours in the window (just like at my parents’ house on Long Island, minus the tablecloth, and in a different country).

So for now, I eat all my meals in the living room, where we have a lovely little table near the window which sometimes has a tablecloth and flowers on it.  It’s a at least a step up from that little studio I used to live in, where I have to eat dinner either at my desk or sitting on my bed, both within 2 meters of each other.

However, in an incredible act of mimicry, Baxter has picked up on the fact that we don’t eat in the kitchen.  His food might be in the kitchen, but that doesn’t mean he has to eat it there.  He has evolved a strange eating ritual that involves going into the kitchen to pick up a few nuggets of his dried dog food, carrying it into the hallway (or my room, or the living room), dropping a couple of pieces on the ground, eating them one at a time, then running back into the kitchen to repeat the process.

I don’t know why he doesn’t eat in the kitchen. It’s certainly big enough for his purposes (hey, if I ate out of a bowl standing up it would be good enough for my purposes too).  Yet another strange Baxter habit to add to the ever-growing list.

PS. Today on my walk home I saw a boy on a unicycle riding up the rue de Buci. Then not long after I saw a man wearing a tuba on rue Rochechouart.  Is the circus in town?

animosity amongst the toys

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I think Baxter is jealous of my laptop. 

It is, after all, always in my lap.  I give it my undivided attention.  I’m always touching it, tapping away at the keys or stroking the touchpad for the mouse.  I take it all over the apartment with me.

Baxter sits next to me when I’m working.  I do occasionally pat, scratch, rub, kiss, or otherwise lavish attention on him.  But he gets nowhere near the attention my laptop gets.

This would all be pure speculation, if Baxter didn’t have a couple of curious habits toward the laptop.  If I’m sitting on the couch and Baxter is walking around on the floor, he’ll come over to the couch from time to time, stand on his hand legs, and start tapping me with his front paws.  If I don’t respond, he’ll start hitting the laptop to get my attention.  This invariably provokes a negative response from me, but I guess a negative response is better than no resposne at all- especially to a dog.

If he’s sitting next to me on the couch (as he is now), he’ll also come over to me to check on me or to solicit attention.  No response from mommy? This is his cue to start tapping on the keyboard.  While I appreciate Baxter’s contributions to my JTA articles, they aren’t as coherent as they would need to be, often consisting of things like "wawqqwqwQSAA."   

If he has been pushed off the keyboard and told firmly to stop, he is sometimes undeterred, and will physically climb up onto the laptop and walk across it, closing programs and wreaking mayhem. 

So.  I don’t know what to do but I feel rather like a mother trying to prove to the oldest child that although the baby gets a lot of attention, I love them both equally as much, and in different ways.

breaking news

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-baxter got a haircut.  he looks adorable and, more importantly, he is CLEAN.  He got a new broccoli-shaped chew toy for being such a good boy at the groomer’s.

-j, having temporarily regained his senses, has once again been deprived of them.  the reason? he can’t manage his workload and have a girlfriend at the same time, at least for the next six months.  I officially understand the impossibility of the situation (honestly, I do, I’ve been through what he’s going through), but unofficially I reject this explanation and am going to have to be content to write this one off as one of those bizarre things that can happen to you when you’re not careful and let yourself fall for someone before you really know them and their issues.   

-I saw the most amazing movie tonight– "va, vis et deviens." I can’t write much about it now because I’m still a little too upset about j to think rationally enough to write a film critique. suffice it to say: it’s about a 9-year-old ethiopian refugee in israel, whose (christian) mother sent him there to escape the refugee camp in the sudan where he was sure to die, telling him to "va, vis et deviens" [go, live and become].  in order to survive, he has to pass as an ethiopian jew named schlomo.  the film follows his life from the moment of separation from his mother to fatherhood and the relocation of his birth mother.  there’s a lacanian analysis to be written in there somewhere, but I’m not the one to write it.  anyway– as I was telling my friend Lis on the metro heading home after the film– I don’t know if it’s better to see a comedy or a movie like this the day you get your heart broken.  if you see a comedy, you get to laugh for two hours, but then when you leave you’re faced with your misery again.  at least with a movie like this, you have to admit that your own problems seem small in comparison.  when you leave the theatre, they’re still there, and you have to come to terms with them, but without a doubt you’ve been served a heaping portion of humble pie.

I should add I cried the entire movie, for various reasons:
-there was the simple heartbreak of watching a little boy leave his mother. 
-then there was the loading of the El Al plane in the Sudan and the subsequent deplaning in Tel Aviv.  this of course made me think of that time when I boarded an El Al place in the Sudan.  No, just kidding.  But it made me nostalgic about my own trip to Israel in 1999, and I felt a renewed sense of committment to Israel and to Judaism.  However, I felt somewhat divided about and suspicious of those feelings– I felt proud of Israel for basically saving Ethiopian and Soviety Jewry in the 80s, but I was/am conflicted about the problematics associated with welcoming a group of people into a country and turning away others on the basis of their religion.  The film certainly touched on that, but didn’t explore it in great length.
-there was my own weird relationship to judaism, and the fact that I’ve had it so deeply called into question because of all these freaking goys who keep screwing me over
-then when he found his mother at the end, I started bawling because I wanted MY mommy.

then at random times during the film, for no related reason, I would remember one of j’s gestures or mannerisms or figures of speech, and I would remember that it was over with us, and I would cry again.

that’s all for now. who was it who said life is a veil (vale?) of tears? I really, really want there to be fewer tears in my life, starting NOW. Genug! Merde, ca me fait chier, ce mec!

baxter does the moonwalk

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I’m sitting up in bed reading my email, getting over a massive combination hangover/migraine.  Baxter was just over on his wee-wee pad doing, well, what he does there.  When he finished, he started doing the strangest thing–  moving himself in a backwards direction while trying to dig up the carpet with gusto.  I looked at him with one eyebrow raised.  He caught my eye and froze mid-moonwalk, and then righted himself, as if to say,  "ahem. excuse the lapse into common dog behavior."  It was a very Brian on "The Family Guy" moment.

One of my recent  interludes did the moonwalk for me.  Who was it? I hardly know who to look back on fondly, wryly, because they’re all collapsing into each other. That’s the problem with dating around, instead of staying with one person: it’s hard to remember who said or did what clever thing.

baxter doesn’t care about:

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stoplights…cars…strangers…dirt…his leash…commands…english…french…new york…privacy…silence…

baxter hates:

toys under the bed…mommy leaving…his leash…water…getting dried off…getting brushed…

baxter loves:

mommy…treats…other dogs…other species…mommy…friendly people…paris…sleeping on the bed…running around in circles…toys…mommy…