"your pet doesn't love you; it just has learned that it will get treats if it acts a certain way. it can't understand you."
in between humans, i don't always speak the language either. love has always been hard for me. i don't trust it. i can't read it easily on people's faces - i'm usually trying to read past it; to the "other parts", the ones that make sense to me.
but my mom always offers me food as soon as i get through the door. my brother calls me at weird hours, just to be talking. my sister has a nightmare; asks me to please drive safe in the morning. i throw my friends random parties, just to celebrate something. she drives 45 minutes to spend 3 hours with me. amelia holds my hand while we both cross the street.
no, my dog and i don't have the same language. so what? this is not the same thing as communication. my dog is a good study in how trauma can heal - a rescue from the racetrack; i've been watching his personality develop slowly. in the last year, he's gotten so comfortable with me that he'll ask me to sit down on the grass so he can use my body as a seat. (it's important to note: he is huge. he squishes me. i don't complain. i find it lovely.)
love for us is also just endorphins and behavioral response. i'm a poet, the number of sad men that have tried to "teach me" how stupid it is to be a hopeless romantic is ... not a low one. i cannot count how many times someone has argued - it's all chemical stimulus - as if the fact of it makes it less magical. we're just electrical signals reading the universe! that's fucked up. that's so beautiful.
i find it hard to believe that in the spectrum of evolution we are the only species to feel like this - we already know that dogs and cats also have endorphins. why wouldn't they experience joy? love? companionship? in what world is it a new thing that i had to earn it? in every relationship, both individuals have to work to learn the language. i had to teach my dog what trust is. it's okay that it took time for him to learn it.
in the human world, when i love someone, it's hard for me to speak it. i write them poems or make them food or give them a cool rock i found on the beach.
i don't know how to tell goblin i love him, so i tell him through treats. through a new collar, fancy mattresses, a little bow on his leash. i tell him with long walks and petting him and sitting down on the wet ground so my 70 pound sharp noodle of a dog can prance on my thigh bones and take an awkward - if loving - seat.
"you taught your dog to love you" is kind of a cruel way to reframe what actually happened: i loved him so loudly, it skipped over language and species. the two of us just saying - oh! i have figured out a way to tell you that you make me happy.

i dont claim to be an expert on love but i think theres something to like… ok so my girlfriend got undertale on the switch a while back, right? and she’s definitely not a bad videogamer but it takes practice yknow, esp when youre doing a neutral route and actually fight stuff. so when she got to the hardest bosses i took the controller and beat them for her. not because she couldn’t, but because i love her. and that’s what my brother did when i was a kid playing sonic adventure 2 or whatever, not because i was dumb but because he was good at it and he loved me. and when i want my girlfriend to read something (a post, an essay, a novel) but she’s too tired to actually read so it i read it to her and i do silly voices and she laughs and we have more fun that way. when you hand a water bottle to your friend and they open it without you even having to ask. when you spent a million years fixing the flat tire on your bike and then your dad just takes the tools and does it for you. its not a judgement, it’s just a service. you could do it yourself, but why should you have to when you are loved?
No, but that’s exactly something that should be put in a museum.
Imagine seeing this two, three, eight hundred years after the fact. Imagine this little girl through centuries of time holding up her hand to show you her most precious rock. It’s potent enough now, this intimate knowledge of a complete stranger, this tiny insight into what was explained to her and what she thought was important and who listened to her long enough to let you see it, but imagine centuries in the future. Imagine this little bit of rock that looks like every other bit of rock, with no context and no explanation to it. And then imagine finding/seeing this little sign, and realising that it was Bethan’s rock. That it was a rock that a little girl loved the look of , and picked up, and carried around with her, and when it was explained to her that museums were places where precious things were shown so that other people could see and enjoy them, the precious thing she wanted them to show, that she wanted to show you, was this rock.
This is what material history is. These windows through time into a person’s life and beliefs and mundane treasures, these bridges across centuries where a child a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand years ago can show you her favourite rock.
That is, in so many ways, what museums are for. And well done them for following through.

“Take Care” by Jordan Bolton
Part of “Scenes from Imagined Films” Comic
i ❤️ coming on here to look at pictures and words
Garden-land - illustration by Harrison Cady - 1907 - viaΒ Internet Archive

I think that this article should be mandatory reading for everyone age 16-25, especially if youβre in university. Read it here.









