Effortless Effervescence

A few months ago, a good friend of mine had to say good-bye to one of her friends: her horse, Bubba. I was lucky enough to spend the day with the two of them before Bubba went to be with pony Jesus* and not only did I get to experience what a sweet and loving soul Bubba was, I got to see how much his mom Kerry loved him.

Kerry has decided to get a tattoo in honor of Bub’s memory, and I was humbled (and nervous!) when she asked me to draw it for her. I printed out a few of her Bubba pics (she has, like, FIVE THOUSAND - not that I can talk, I mean, have you seen how many pictures I have of my furbabies?) did a handful of sketches, consulted with her, handed the sketches over so she could erase and doodle and erase some more, went back to the drawing board, consulted with her again via picture mail, and VOILA, the finished product you see at left.

It’s gorgeous, right? And I’m not just saying that because I collaborated on it. To me, it’s beautiful because it honors an exceptional animal and the exceptional bond he had with my friend. Sometimes a very special thing, like love, can’t be fully described in words. And that’s why God gave us art.

* When my Siamese cat, Oatmeal, had to be put down after nineteen years of friendship and snuggles, I said she went to be with kitty Jesus. Some people don’t think animals go to heaven. I respectfully disagree, and if anyone wishes to argue with me, I will respectfully dot them in the eye.

I wish more people would take the time to consider weird art, because it’s often the things we find perplexing, discomforting, even disgusting, that can teach us the most about the world and ourselves. Consider “String of Babies, holds a baby bottle upright,” Daniel Edwards’ sculpture of the media sensation dubbed Octomom. Edwards has captured Nadya Suleman’s saint-like expression perfectly, and it occurs to me as I look at her gentle Mona Lisa smile that she’s the sort of woman that makes people happy, makes them comfortable: pretty, soft-spoken, earnest. She comes across as someone who is decidedly against rocking the boat, who does everything in her power to keep the peace, who’d rather suffer torture than hurt someone’s feelings or make them mad. There is not a trace of cunning in her large, brightly shining eyes.

But rock the boat Nadya did. She’s inspired deep feelings of injustice and incredulous anger in thousands - maybe millions? - of people across the world. Amid the “how dare she” and “who they hell is paying for this” questions is a deeper, more disturbing question: “Why?” Not only why did she do this - and the theories I’ve heard range from suspicions that she’s using her children as pawns to garner fame and fortune to speculation that she has Narcissistic Personality Disorder - but why do her actions get the rest of the world so damn fired up?

I honestly don’t know. I try to maintain coolly distant attitude towards the ill-advised choices others make. “I wouldn’t do it,” I say, “but who am I to judge?” Sometimes, though, my live-and-let-live-even-if-they’re-stupider-than-mud worldview is challenged by someone whose actions are so outside the realm of what I find acceptable and understandable that I cannot help but shriek, “Are you fucking CRAZY?”

Perhaps that’s what so unsettling about “The Octomom” - her choices are so outside the norm of American culture that we regard her as a freak, a sick and dangerous person who is intent on self-destruction and cannot be trusted to care for her own children. This is surely why Edwards chose to depict her as an alien monster, cradling her tiny babies in coyly protective tentacles. She is hideous to us, and yet we can’t turn away. The irony is, of course, that Nadya seems puzzled by and only mildly concerned with the public outrage over her reproductive choices. What people think about her is nowhere near as important as, say, caring for her children. She’s got the “problem,” but we’re the ones who can’t let it go.