Sunday, January 5, 2014

This is Thor.




Meet Thor.

Thor is an English bulldog. This picture of him was taken on the day I brought him home at eight weeks old. Pretty damn cute, ain't he?

Thor is one of the reasons this blog exists. This isn't to say that this entire blog will be about Thor, but it will certainly be about my life now, which is far different now than it was before Thor came into it.

Let me explain, by, I suppose, by not really explaining at all: one of my all-time favorite books is Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. First a comic books series, the book is actually a fleshed out version of a BBC mini-series made from the comic in the mid-90s. All of this to say that this copy of a copy of a copy is a wonderful thing--a "keep you up until 3 in the morning" tale full of adventure, humanity, humor, and one of the best characters in contemporary fiction, the Marquis de Carabas.

The book, like Thor, came to me during this weird, frightening, and massive transition period in my life and the plight of the main character, Richard Mayhew, resonated deeply. You see, Richard leads a perfectly ordinary life. It's nothing spectacular, but it's fine and it's what he thought he wanted because that's what he thought he should want. He's shaken out of his life though after helping a young girl named Door, who's from a place called London Below--basically the flip-side of London proper, reserved for people who have fallen through the cracks of life, who fail to meet society's expectations. By helping Door, Richard falls through the cracks and spends the rest of the book pining for his old life, the one he thought he took for granted, the one he swears he will appreciate if he ever gets it back.

And the story could have certainly gone in that direction: how many times have we seen the story of the life taken for granted until it's all but gone? By the end of the book, that perspective is turned on its head (perhaps predictably, but no less wonderfully) because--and here's my point--change can be good and, sometimes, the life we're trying to keep together is more about other people's expectations than about living a life we actually want.

Thor is a part of my life now. The life I actually want. And, he's a good part of the story of how I, too, (spoilers, I suppose, if you haven't read Neverwhere) decided to stay in my own metaphorical London Below.


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