Invecchiare Selvatico Reflects On “Old Dog: A Traveler’s Tale”

We May Not Be Able To Teach Old Dogs New Tricks,
But They Might Be Able To Remind Us Of What We Already Know

Invecchiare Selvatico Reflects On
“Old Dog: A Traveler’s Tale” by Mark Seely

from OAK JOURNAL (Issue #5 Spring 2023)

For as long as I can remember, I have been a devout and unapologetic “cat person”, envying their agility, seemingly unfettered aloofness, and their unique ability to straddle the ever-fluid feral space between domesticated and wild, maybe the best case scenario for a suburban-born-transplanted-to-wild-mountain-human like myself. Dogs, on the other hand, always kind of bothered me. I viewed them as even more annoying than the domesticated human from my perception of their lack of uniqueness, personal agency, and self-reliance. I considered dogs the perpetual slobbering couch surfer, gleaning the minimalist of existence: crumbs from the table, a mat on the floor, and following their masters around desperately yearning for brief moments of affection. I had little respect for what I thought was a slavish existence accepted out of sheer laziness, dependency, and lack of imagination, not to mention depositing their solid waste in all the most inconvenient of places. However, our elderly hound dog’s last sick and suffering days in this reality coupled with my recent reading of “Old Dog: A Traveler’s Tale” by Mark Seely, changed not only my view of Lil’ Girl (our family dog) and dogs in general, but offered me more poetically-inspired evidence that the domesticated human, by choice, by habit, or by circumstance, is in fact, lower than the dog. And perhaps, the dog actually holds more valuable and relative inspiration for us than the much envied and ever-elusive cat in how we might be able to shake the leashes of civilization from around our calloused necks. We may not be able to teach old dogs new tricks, but they might be able to remind us of what we already know.

To say “Old Dog” is a refreshing oasis in an otherwise desert landscape of thoughts put to paper (does anyone remember writing on paper?) would be a gross understatement. In a world of undigested and viral regurgitation of agendas, politics, and rhetoric, not to mention every excuse possible to keep moving forward the project of organized deadness called Civilization, Seely has deeply and profoundly found a way to understand and express the immensity of what is wrong with this world in great detail, but in a unique, interesting, relatable, and poetic way, through the eyes of a domesticated canine simply named Old Dog. Dogs are probably our closest relative in terms of the domestication process, what it has done to us, how we respond, the terrain we inhabit, yet dogs don’t seem to be weighed down with the double-burden of a neurotic consciousness that tries to comprehend, rationalize, and theorize about it. As Seely repeatedly reminds us, Old Dog, is alive with civilization, not in civilization like us domesticated humans. Seely, unlike just about every author, thinker, or activist today, is not offering excuses, rationalized and naive ways out, or plans for the future. He is stating things as honestly as possible, both eyes open wide, and expressing what he sees and the connections he draws. He doesn’t offer false hope that it could be any different within the context of civilization, but also holds firmly in that it hasn’t always been this way, it will never be this way in the immense complexity of life, and won’t always be this way, as the propensity of life occurs off of any anthropocentric timeline or projection. Dogs live in the now, so what a perfect way to express everything missing in how civilized humans interact with the world. Dogs dwell in the literal world, not the symbolic, not the organized, not the mechanistic, not the rationalized, not the idealized, not the projected. Dogs are directly experiencing a flowing and breathing world, without needing Heidegger, Ram Das, or an over-simplified interpretation of the variety of indigenous life-ways to remind them to “be here now”.

The civilized world is a mechanized, technological template placed over and constricting life to a planned and projected way. For the civilized, our days are about constant negotiations, giving away part of ourselves, compromising, going along or fighting against, but never truly living. But life is about relationships, authentically and directly participating in the fluid, complex, and chaotic experience in the endless ways this might happen in the moment as our unique selves. Life also has, for lack of better description, an unconscious logic to it, that which the post-modern trans-humanist dupes might opportunistically call “deterministic” in their wish to absolutely and completely reject the so-called “confines of the biological”, one that guides: belly empty, smell food, find food, eat food, but even this has an ever-moving center to it. Civilization, on the other-hand, is about judgement, justification, abstraction, re-contextualization, rationalization of the past, the future, and the trajectory between. As Seely repeatedly comes back to, Old Dog is alive with civilization, humans are stuck in civilization. This difference seems slight, but to the domesticated being, it is tremendously vast. It is a place to better understand. Also, as someone who is significantly more distant from the current socio-technological condition/affliction than most, as I do not have a cellphone nor internet at my off-the-grid mountain home, I can relate on some significant levels to Old Dog’s proximity to the current form of the human domesticate. Yes, I am still primarily a domesticated being, but I am one step removed from the current incarnation, and yet still greatly affected by it. How I envy my perception of Old Dog’s ability to partially transcend on some level, through a combination of choice and so-called “primitive limitation”.

“Old Dog” reads beautifully, simply, and deeply. As someone who has come to very similar, or at least parallel, conclusions decades ago, it does not feel repetitive, stale, or non-engaging. While these days I typically prefer to read texts which are vastly different from my own perspective, to challenge me, keep me growing, and to sharpen my axe, Seely keeps me very interested, offers new incites, and expresses old ones in ways I haven’t thought of or seen in a method like this before. I have grown quite bored with what most people write about these days, especially in the so-called anarchist space, falling into the same agendas and cliches of the day or that I’ve read a million times before or offering idealized schematics of more drudgery, but “Old Dog” kept me engaged and curious as the pages melted away like butter left out on the table on a hot Southern Oregon Summer day. Seely, impressively and fluidly examines just about every conceivable angle on the gross discrepancy between the nomadic hunter-gatherer human experience and that of the domesticated and mutilated relative, modern humans. From symbolic culture, to technology, to mental illness, to relationships, to emotions, to knowledge, his case against civilization is both decisive and holistic.

As we follow the recollected journeys of Old Dog we travel through a multitude of situations and contexts that allow him, and us, to grapple with, understand, and learn from. From his playful youth abruptly transformed to a stark reality chained outside the house of his first human family after instinctually defending a child from an abusive parent, to his eventual abandonment by them on a lonesome and unfamiliar roadside, to his confusing and jarring journey into the city, to his brief tenure at a homeless encampment under a bridge, to his deep bonding and three-year semi-formal education with a woman struggling with delusions, to running with a pack of fellow feral canines, to his days of imprisonment and pending execution at the pound, to his golden years with the author who rescues him at the last hour and who offers us a more wine-soaked philosophical and analytical perspective, Old Dog challenges us to look more deeply at the mundane and more simply at the complex, and to be more authentic in the experience, something contrary to the domesticated conditioning within civilization. But most importantly, Old Dog reminds us of what we have lost and what we may already know. I look forward to embracing my fresh and more complex outlook towards our canine companions and what they might teach us about ourselves… but, I also would still very much like to be a cat.

So, as I put down this copy of “Old Dog: A Traveler’s Tale” by Mark Seely, many thoughts race through my mind and feelings tug at my heart, but one keeps resurfacing like an old gray whale reaching for air in a stormy and dangerous sea, and it is the idea that everything that has, is, and will ever happen is against the most extreme of odds, approaching the impossible, so with this deeply recognized, deeply accepted, deeply felt, just about anything is possible. This does not offer hope in the common and civilized understanding of that concept, in a linear trajectory, a planned possibility for another world, a utopian fantasy, or as some sort of post-modern cornucopia, but instead leads me to ponder the thought that despite civilization’s omni-present and deeply ingrained strangulation on life, its actual grasp on us, domestication, is actually very thin and fragile. In the end, it is mostly us that keeps the leash around our necks. It is us who feeds on what it provides, who lives in the fashion it tells us, who takes what it prescribes, who treat each other how it directs, who values what it presents to us, even in most situations where we think we are pushing against it. This is not to say that any escape is easy, or even likely, just that it may be remotely possible for domesticated humans with open eyes and hearts to begin to move away from civilization in their own lives, and maybe someday, as much more of the apparatus of civilization crumbles under its own limitations, move towards something feral, and perhaps after generations of this, intimate and authentic packs of beautiful wild humans might dwell within the living world once again….as barks and woofs become howls!

Mark Seely is a writer, psychologist, and educator.
He is the author of Civilization Heresies (2020) and Stones: Meditations on Human Authenticity (2017).
Old Dog (2022) is available from Resource Publications (www.wipfandstock.com)

Invecchiare Selvatico is the author of
Black Blossoms At The End Of The World
available from LBC Books (littleblackcart.com)
and former editor of Green Anarchy magazine.
Contact author: nazelpickens@gmail.com

OAK JOURNAL (Issue #5 - Spring 2023)
PO BOX 485
26851