Losing track of how to categorise my posts etc.
But categorising and the need to document is so much a part of the anthroprocene – so i’ll let it be.

A few thoughts and things on my mind.

Last week (?) we talked about changing our final assessment to an individual one, or talked about a side project, but this was dismissed as being a Vanity Project. I made the comment that I didn’t think I would learn anything or that I figured I would already know what I would learn by the end of it. Adrian dismissed this as being insane.

So I took it upon myself to start a small documenting project over the past week or so since that class.
I often arrive home late from Uni and from work, and most of my family is already asleep or away. The first thing to greet me is my dog – and I thought this was an integral part of my routine or day that I had not noticed; every time I arrive home, my dog is there, and I wake him by stepping by him and saying hello.

I thought it would be interesting to take a photo of him every time I arrive home – the interest arriving in the different times of day I arrive home, and the different places he sleeps. I planned to do this for the rest of the semester.

However, three days ago my dog got very sick. He is an old farm dog so I can’t say it was unexpected. Today we made the decision to have him put to rest.

I don’t know how to continue this project – but to see it abandoned at the sight of change seems counterintuitive. It’s been a very sad weekend so I don’t want to put too much thought into it.

My logic would be to continue to take the photos as I arrive home, of the space or of his burial place. But I think for this to have happened so soon after starting the project has some sort of cliche about it and I don’t want that to tarnish the nuance of what was a very loving dog who – to apply to our research – was endlessly multifaceted and complex. It would be unfair to surmount his life to my narrative project of ‘alive, happy, and then gone.’

All in all, I guess I was insane to think I wouldn’t notice anything. I just wish this subject wasn’t what I was attuned to.

R.I.P
Paddy ‘Padfoot’ Powlett
2002 – 2017
‘Born with six toes,
Lived on three feet.’