Small Acts

Whitman thought he could live with animals, they were so placid and self-contained, not one of them dissatisfied. I have lived with animals. They kept me up all night. Not only tom cats on the prowl, and neurotic rats behind my baseboards, scratching out a slim existence. There were cattle next door in the butcher’s pen, great longhorns lowing in the dark. Their numbers had come up and they knew it. I let their rough tongues lick my sorry palm. Nothing else I could do for them, or they for me. Walt can live with the animals. I’ll take these vegetables on parade: string-beans and cabbage heads and pea brains, who negotiate a busy crosswalk and feel brilliant, the smallest act accomplished no mean feat, each one guiding them to other small acts that will add up, in time, to something like steady purpose. They cling to this fate, clutch it along with their brownbag lunches: none of us would choose it, but this is their portion, this moment, then this one, then the next. Little as it is, pitiful as it seems, this is what they were given, and they don’t want to lose it. The gawky and the slow, the motley and the misshapen… What bliss to be walking in their midst as if I were one of them, just ride this gentle wave of idiocy, forget those who profess an interest in my welfare, look passing strangers in the eye for something we might have in common, and be unconcerned if nothing’s there. And now we peek into a dark café, and now we mug at the waitress whose feet are sore, whose smile makes up for the tacky carnations and white uniform makes it easy to mistake her for a nurse, even makes it necessary, given the state of the world. And when the giant with three teeth harangues us to hurry up, what comfort to know he’s a friend, what pleasure to be agreeable, small wonders of acquiescence, like obedient pets. Except animals don’t have our comic hope, witless as it is. They don’t get to wave madly at the waitress, as though conducting a symphony of ecstatic expectations. If I turned and lived with animals I’d only be a creature of habit, I’d go to where the food is and the warmth. But I wouldn’t get to say to my troubled friend, “Your eyes are so beautiful. I could live in them.”