The Grapevine Art & Soul Salon

Reflections: Charles Knott

On the Nativity and Subsequent Happy Arrival of the Bijon

I was sitting at home upstairs in my office at my computer trying to make a sentence come out right when I heard a high-pitched falsetto howling. I looked out my window and saw a small white dog with tan markings pacing nervously in front of my garden gate. I could not interpret his howling beyond just knowing that he wanted something, that not having it was causing him distress, and that he was not shy about telling anybody who might be willing to listen. Being a total pushover for little dogs in distress, I immediately abandoned my own distress over my syntax problem and rushed down the stairs and out the front door. Unfortunately, the little dog had disappeared.

I went back upstairs and resumed my experimental work on a sentence that was also distressed in its own peculiar way. Then I heard the howling again. I went downstairs again, and again the dog had disappeared. Even worse, the weather report had predicted this December night would be the coldest of the year so far. This little puppy did not need to be alone in the woods tonight. I walked around the house but couldn't find him. I should mention that the house is very large and sits on eight acres of land. Only the front four acres are "civilized" (maybe "cultivated" would be a better word), and a small part of the acreage behind the house is fenced in. The back door opens into the fenced in part, and adjacent to and outside the fence is some uncleared land. I think of the uncleared land as" the Briarpatch" from the Uncle Remus tales, and I've been promising myself for years that I was going to clean it up. Nevertheless, here it still was and is.

When I arrived at the Briarpatch I saw the puppy running away. I felt a certain pathos because I know that unleashed dogs soon become the property of the county dog shelter, and this little dog was just too cute to suffer such a fate. Yet, it was a fact that I could not chase him down; his little trotters were way too fast for me. So I wished him well and went back to my computer.

A few minutes later the howling resumed, and he was back at the front gate. This started about ten o'clock in the morning and went on and on, this howling and demanding attention and his disappearing when I went downstairs to help him. Finally, around nine o'clock that night I heard him howling from the general direction of the Briarpatch. I went into the backyard and my son's boxer Gotti was standing inside the fence. He was actually pointing at a spot on the fence. By this, I mean that he had lined up his body from tail to nose and was using his body to indicate where the howling dog was on the other side.

I went through the gate and looked into the Briarpatch and sure enough, there was the little canine huddled up against the fence looking scared and exhausted. Normally, I would be very cautious approaching a dog I didn't know, but this dog was obviously well cared for and non-aggressive. I worked my way very slowly and very carefully, with considerable discomfort to myself, through eight or nine feet of viney entanglements until I was right up within reach of the little boy (somehow, with no need for a detailed examination, I always knew he was a boy). I talked to him soothingly for a long time and then reached down and picked him up. He immediately laid his chin against my neck and cuddled up against me. I kept repeating to him, "Don't be afraid, little boy. I'm not going to hurt you. All I want is a chance to help you get home." And again, "All I want is a chance to help you get home."

In retrospect, I see the irony of my "wanting to help him get home": even as I was saying this over and over again, he was thinking, You silly man. I'm already home. You just don't know it yet!

I took him into the TV room and showed him off to my son, to our rottweiler, our boxer, and our black lab. He was far and away the smallest dog in the room. Also, he was the only dog in the room who smelled of shampoo mingled with a woman's perfume. This was obviously somebody's baby, and my job was to get him home before I got attached to him myself. He, on the other hand, was thinking, I heard your black lab is on his very last legs and that you will have an opening coming up in the next few days, so I decided to apply. That's exactly the way it worked out. His happy arrival corresponded within three days of poor BooBoo's departure, an event the memory of which plunges me into grief even now.

The only dog food I could find had been bought for Freda, our hundred pound rottweiler. I put a handful in a feed bowl and poured some vegetable beef soup over it. As our new arrival consumed it, I could see an aura of pleasure radiating from his head, like ripples on a pond. His residual distress evaporated instantly and he started taking in the room and its various inhabitants with a healthy curiosity and a generally content and wholesome demeanor. Yes, this was home.

All the while I looked at him, I had in my mind an image of a little French Arab boy who had attended our Montessori school in Nyack, New York, back in the 1980s. The little boy and the little dog both had sculpted, fine featured faces. Why do I keep thinking about this child? I asked myself. I remembered that his name was Bijon. That's it, I said to myself. This little dog wants to be named Bijon. And so I made an announcement to all the present humans and canines: let his name now and forevermore be, you guessed it, Bijon.

In my defense, I want it known that I advertised our discovery of this little dog. I called our city hall and our police department; I photographed Bijon and put up posters around town. In accordance with my own strongly held preference, no one claimed the little devil. He was soon part of the household and has been ever since.

One amusing development occurred when a friend from down the street stopped by a couple of weeks later. The amusing aspect of his visit was that he recognized this little dog but said nothing. He liked having Bijon be right where he was, and had no desire to rescue him. He knew the couple who owned Bijon's litter. The story eventually disclosed was that they had a Jack Russell Terrier and a Pekingese. Secretly, and against the owner's wishes, the two dogs mated and produced a bizarre spawn of long legged females ... and Bijon. The females were said to be hyper, played roughly, and trampled little Bijon with their long legs. Obviously, the boy had enough of it and decided he could do better elsewhere, so he mustered his courage and set out on a journey that brought him to his true home.

His temperament is very unusual. It's interesting to study his behavior and speculate as to where the Jack Russell Terrier and the Pekingese intersect. He can be extremely vigorous and high strung one minute and completely laid back and calm the next. He has a powerful hunting instinct and a tireless nose that, when he is not snoozing, continuously twitches, as though taking in olfactory samples of reality known only by him and stored away in some endless archive in his brain; he is also a lapdog who can cuddle lazily by the hour. Several times I have enjoyed watching him stretch out his short legs and chase a deer across the front yard, and then, only a few minutes later, be sound asleep with his chin on my knee.

Once I asked him what he would do with the deer if he caught it, and he made no reply, as if the question were totally irrelevant. I might as well have asked him why he likes to cuddle and have his tummy rubbed. If he were to speak, he would say, Surely the answer is self-evident.

Enjoy the following piece from a previous issue that ends with a photograph of Charles and Bijon, and go to Contributing Artists (left panel), click on Charles Knott and see two more wonderful photos.

On Loving Animals

A story has it that "in olden times" animals and humans separated out from each other and then the earth opened up a great divide between them. At the last moment, as the divide was opening, the dogs jumped over to be with humans and left the rest of the animal kingdom behind. So most people can love dogs. Dogs are easy.

The most remarkable thing about Facebook to me is the extent to which so much of it is devoted to loving all kinds of animals: chickens, donkeys, horses, birds, cows, not to mention cats and dogs. Most any animal that is warm-blooded can be seen hungrily enjoying human affection and generously returning affection from its own amazingly deep feelings, like the donkey I saw in a video, braying its heart out as it hurries across the barnyard to accept the embrace of a little girl.

Besides the affection traveling from humans to other animals and back again, there is a lot of love shown between animals of the same species and even across species,such as a nursing mother dog accepting a kitten or even a duckling into her litter. That recalls to mind the statement "And the lion shall lie down with the lamb," often made in church with a tone of utopian hopelessness, as if this condition would be nice, but it can never happen. Nowadays we see that it is happening, or at least that it can be made to happen under the right circumstances.

Is there a new spirit of love and compassion entering the world? It is certainly new to me when I see a child lovingly hugging and caressing a rooster who returns to the child's arms time and again for more, or when I see a goat and a horse nuzzling each other's muzzles. In these instances, it is intriguing to watch the major biological premise of the universe (that life survives by devouring life) being suspended, no matter how temporarily.

All my life I have been averse to eating animals, though I have hypnotized myself like everyone else into thinking of grocery store meat as acceptable and necessary, and so blocking out slaughterhouse images. I have been fascinated by people who learned instead to eat plants exclusively. New information about plant sensibility brings the question of what then shall we eat?

One of my favorite images came from long ago reading about George Bernard Shaw's belief that when he got to heaven, all the animals whose lives he had spared by being a vegetarian would come parading by and thank him. I also remember my father, who had vegetarian tendencies, saying, "As long as there is peanut butter, I will leave the animals alone." I am fond of Robinson Jeffers' remark, "I'd sooner kill a man than a hawk." And I remember reading a story about a man who approached Heaven with his dog and was told that he could come in, but no dogs were allowed. Rejecting such a heaven as this, the man turned away and left with his dog, only to be called back and told, "You just passed the last test! You and your dog can come in."

When I worked in South Georgia, I lived for a year in a little house beside a cow pasture. In this pasture with the cows was one male donkey, a jack. Jack was the most lively and playful animal I had ever seen. He jumped and ran and teased the cows, and they loved it. The farmer who owned the place did not appreciate this, fearing that one of his cows might get injured, so he put the donkey in a separate pasture by himself. The jack became totally depressed. I could not even get him to eat a carrot. Fortunately, he was soon relocated to a place where he could be with other animals and play all he wanted. This seemed to validate what I've heard many times, that animals must have companionship.

I visited with a beautiful Arabian stallion a few times and saw that he was housed with a goat and a couple of chickens! I learned that the presence of the goat and the chickens was to give the horse some creatures to love and enjoy. Without them, he would grow depressed.

My father tried his hand at keeping a small herd of cows at our home place in South Fulton County. Without giving it a second thought, I turned them all into pets. Their eyes were so dull when I met them. Love and affection from me lit up their eyes and within a few minutes, they were as playful and happy as large puppies. I remember sitting at the lake one day when one of the cows came along and tried to sit in my lap! That may be why my father didn't pet the animals he tended.

A downside to extravagant love between humans and other animals was illustrated in a video segment I saw on Facebook where a man had gained the love of a grizzly bear. Unfortunately, the man now wanted to leave the grizzly and go on about his other business, but the bear would have none of it! He loved his new human and would not let go of him. I don't know what arrangement they finally made, but whatever it was, I expect one of them felt cheated.

I can't help wondering why a "dog-eat-dog" universe would be populated with animals so capable of loving so deeply. Even the most voracious animals are affectionate toward their young and will give up their own food for them. Nevertheless, all of nature seems to be caught up in a, "Now you eat me, now I'll eat you!" mentality. Once, when I was talking about these things at a conference lecture, I pointed fortuitously to a Native American drawing that had been framed and placed on the wall of the Lodge where we were meeting. The drawing showed a large fish eating a slightly smaller fish who was, in turn, eating a slightly smaller fish, who was, in turn, eating another slightly smaller fish, and so on. I truly regret that we are caught in such a system. Humans are capable of becoming vegetarians, and so they can escape this system if they want to. Dogs, however, have to have animal protein in their diets to be healthy. My two dogs eat grain free dry food that uses an assortment of vegetables and beet meal. Because their food is expensive (tell me about it!), it is also relatively high in animal protein. Joseph Campbell once said, "A tiger that lived on tofu would not be a very good tiger, would he?"

Their temperaments are fascinating to study. The female is a large Rottweiler; the male is a small crossbreed of Jack Russell and Pekingese. When my son first told me he was bringing a Rottweiler puppy home, I felt a moment of panic. These are dangerous, vicious dogs, I thought. She is surely going to cause serious trouble. I had visions of mangled children and devastating lawsuits. When she arrived, I encountered a harmless, playful, shy little puppy of six weeks. Jonathan had chosen her because she would not look him in the eye. He saw this as a sign of submissiveness and felt she would be easy to train. He was correct.

Although she is showing no symptoms of it, Frieda is now in her advanced old age of nine years. In her entire life, to my knowledge, she has never heard an angry voice. She is very sweet and gentle and tries hard to please. Once or twice a visiting dog has attempted to take her supper away from her, and each time Frieda has reverted to an extremely aggressive posture, showing her teeth, growling, and taking on a threatening and frightening aspect. I commented to the owner of the other dog, "Be careful. There really is a Rottweiler in there that we don't want to wake up!" When the other dog was removed from the scene, Frieda immediately went back to her peaceful ways.

Our little dog is named Bijon. His temperament is different. His energy level is extremely high, and he is hyper alert and aware of everything in the environment (seemingly at all times) and he loves to hunt. A year or so ago, when his energy level was even higher than it is today, he escaped from the yard several times and went to the barn to hunt whatever he could find there. Frieda went with him one night and injured her hip joints while trying to keep up with him. She kept to her bed for about a week until she recovered. Bijon likes to run and jump, and he is an endless powerhouse of energy. But, back to my main theme, they are both creatures of love and kindness.

They are capable of calling up powerful instinctual drives, but it seems that when they have a choice they prefer a serene domestic life. The dog-eat-dog world in the woods that surround their peaceful home is generally of no interest to them, although if they were abandoned there, they would recognize the place and its terms of life. If the environment were suitable, they could adapt and survive. I believe there is no place they would rather be than right here, curled up around my feet contentedly as I write.

In short, while it is conceivable that they could successfully bring off a "return to the wild," they greatly prefer a live-and-let-live approach. Ironically, they are mentally still close to nature in the sense that no pesky, conscious thoughts intrude into their lives, enslaving them to false values and spurring them on to do violence against their fellow creatures when they already have everything they need. They are not humans.

My mentor, C. G. Jung, wrote in a letter to Canon H. G. England in 1948 (Letters, Vol. 1, 483-486): "In a way the animal is more pious than man, because it fulfills the divine will more completely than man ever can. (Man) can deviate, he can be disobedient, because he has consciousness." Jung believed that in order to develop consciousness, humans had to overvalue it and consequently to undervalue nature. Other animals never did that. We lost touch with our primitive instinctual selves and, not surprisingly, contact with animals tends to take us back to the evolutionary past when we, too, were creatures of the natural world. That journey is good for us.

I have noticed that animals are prominent in my dreams. Usually, they are calm and serene and embody an attitude that I can aspire to. On animal shows, when I see them in the wild as killers, it makes me sad. The circumstances of life do this to them. If they were able to make conscious decisions and were free to follow their preferences, they might become "good" or "bad," like humans. As it is, they are "pious" and well-regulated, abiding by the laws of nature: If they must kill a lamb in order to eat their dinner, they will. On the other hand, they will not drop a bomb on the whole flock for political purposes. Only people do such things as that.

Left alone in nature, the animal follows its own instinctual self, living the life that nature dictates, and that seems to agree with it very well. In nature, the animal does not gravitate toward excess any more than it shuns the various roles that nature has prescribed for it. Interestingly, there is a Japanese ashram where tigers, once they are fed to satiety on cooked meat, roam freely and harmlessly among the tourists who visit. Once their survival needs are met, they are nonviolent.

I have to admit that animals who still live in the wild have a certain magical appeal. I'm thinking now of the giant Blue Heron that visits the pond in my front yard every year. He was there last week. I happened to be sitting on my front porch when he decided it was time to go. He flew across in front of me, very close, and I could see the utterly unconscious expression in his eye, unchanged in thousands and thousands of years. Wild nature is still in process all around us, not only at the duck pond among some of the higher animals, but also between the cracks in the sidewalk, where insects and plants continue to realize their own ancient behavioral patterns.

As creatures capable of consciousness, we can see that being with animals is good for us. In return for furnishing them with food and protection, they not only gratefully return our love, they also allow us to imitate their moderation and their obedience to the laws of nature. It is a good exchange.

Photo by Jonathan Knott