Nowhere Band News

We had to put our car, Ella, to sleep on Thursday. We’re both still pretty shaken up about it– 6 weeks ago, she was totally fine. And then she developed a limp, and then things got steadily worse by the week as what turned out to be cancer (we thought it was an infection at first) spread like crazy. I’ve been kind of a basket case for at least the past month, ever since it became clear that the antibiotics weren’t working.

The end was pretty bad, but actually not as bad as the weeks preceeding it. We found a vet who did house calls (Ella was notorious for taking on all comers atthe vet office; when I took her in for the first limp, back in August, she fought a vet and two techs to a standstill. A couple of years ago, the vets actualy had to deploy a kind of lasso on a pole to stop her on a vet-office rampage), and let her sit out in the yard for a while before bringing her in and putting her in a patch of sunlight on the couch for the final procedure. She didn’t fight; mostly, she seemed very, very tired.

As you can see in the middle picture above, Ella was actually a big part of my drawing routine. If I sat down to work at my table, she’d appear, jump on my lap, and spend the next hour grimly trying to keep her balance and trying to hang her front feet onto any rulers or sheets of Bristol that came within range. I guess that was a pain in the ass, but it was also fun to have some company.

Rebecca and I are probably more atached to our pets than most people; it’s tough to say, though, because a lot of our friends and wider acquaintances have been really great and understanding as we’ve been dealing with this (once again, I’m sorry to anybody who I’ve been really weird to in the past month… at times, it really did feel like there was someone else in the driver’s seat). One thing that hit me over and over, though, was how many “lame” pop-culture elements actually take on some meaning if you think about them in context. I always used to laugh at Kirby’s Black Racer as the figure of death in The New Gods– a dude on skis who you have to run away from, har har. But it’s a great metaphor (with Kirby, it usually is a great metaphor). The end’s chasing us all, and our primary mission is to make the most of our lives as we try (and inevitably fail) to stay one step ahead. For the past six weeks, I was keenly aware that Ella was losing ground in a race against something; I’m just impressed that she kept the race up as long as she did, especially on 3 legs.

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I also have a lot to say about the death of David Foster Wallace, which was a pretty bad kick in the gut as the rest of this went on. But that’s for later.