Bo-Bo Knows that Sometimes the Things We Want Most Scare Us Senseless

As previously mentioned, Bo-Bo is more of a whimperer than barker. And also as previously mentioned, Bo-Bo's hmm-hmm-hmm is often a signal that there's a canine someone lurking that Bo wants to say meet and greet. Bo's crying teamed with his pricked ears and prancing paws is what I've come to call Bo's I've-taken-a-vow-to-leave-no-bung-hole-unsniffed dance.

But about once a week, the ecstasy backfires.

Bo prances, prances, prances, but when he gets too close to the object of his affection, he decides, oh hell no! His spine impersonates an overgrown elbow macaroni, and he darts clear away. Sometimes into oncoming traffic.

There are times Bo's skittishness is warranted: when that dude in a wet suit decided two feet in front of Bo that right then would be a good time to swing his surfboard in a vaguely weapon-like fashion, when the man who looked so wholesome from across the street actually reeked of cigarettes and sized up Bo like he was a turkey in November, or when a button of a dog turned into a ferocious (but bitsy) beast who barked so hard he hopped backwards and bared his sharp (but pint-sized) teeth.

Most of the time, though, Bo cowers for no good reason.

What if Bo's apparent skittishness was really shyness? What if Bo finally worked up the nerve to talk to the brave and beautiful Cleopatra only to realize this Afghan Hound is so far out of his league Bo can't even remember what made him think this was a good idea a few seconds ago? What if he'd desperately like a turn with the red Frisbee that Meghan-the-cattle-dog carries in her mouth, only Bo can't figure out how to ask her to share? What if he sees a kid he'd love to fawn over but just can't get past that fearsome stroller the kid's trapped inside?

So often the things we want like hunger scare us into staying starved. Last week I set myself up as a literary Olympian, averaging roughly ten pages a day. I made peace with the "rough" in rough draft. In that mindset, I didn't have to remind myself that the journey toward a finished book started with finishing a first draft. I wrote without fretting, and I wrote a lot. I came off of that week with the end of the book clearly in sight. But embracing the "rough" in rough draft felt like an exercise in naivety when I considered the revision to come--jettisoning thousands (upon thousands) of extraneous words and condensing tens of thousands more. I may want a draft more than anything else in my world*, but I've slowed down because (let's not sugarcoat this, shall we?) I'm scared shitless about finishing. And really, I don't have to tackle the revision if I don't finish, right? Well, yeah, but living with unfinished business is so much worse than wrestling the mess. That hunger will start to feed on itself eventually.

When Bo cowers, I put one hand on his back and pet the other dog until Bo comes around. If the threat's human, I stand between Bo and the offending bi-ped until Bo creeps closer to check him out. The way Bo inches closer and closer still until his tail starts whipping around again is no different than the inching, inching, inching I have to do, first toward the draft, and then toward the revision.

Fear has its place (urging us to jump out of the way of oncoming buses, avoid darkly lit alleys, and keep medical appointments), but beyond physical fitness, fear isn't a call to retreat. When it comes to our psychological hungers, fear's a sign that we should press bravely on--no cowering or jumping into oncoming traffic.


*My wishlist for the world at large includes a McCain drubbing in November and a national education policy that recognizes that true intellect is a marriage of pedagogue and poetry, that scores of children get left behind when schools prioritize core academic skills at the expense of the arts.