To pet is to touch. The desire to hold the wild as we do our pets is acute. In the past quarter-century of television, Marlin Perkins, Jacques Cousteau, and others, in the name of science, captured manatees, lassoed gazelles, grappled with crocodiles, or anesthetized lions–ostensibly to treat a disease, restock an area, mark for further study, or rescue from rising waters or industrial development.…In every sequence men clutched, held, or reached out and touched the animals. They fostered our yearning to recover a lost world, to be once again the trusted friend of all beings. They put the animals vicariously into our hands, where we wait for them to tell us something.
…from The Others: How Animals Made Us Human by Paul Shepard, a book that I'm really enjoying and learning from and which I highly recommend.
An old sketch:
…cats I used to be afraid to touch, but didn't mind drawing from a distance.…
No comments:
Post a Comment