Relationships
It took three consecutive meals of kraut and sausages to get these two hounds sober enough for this picture. Their relationship with sauerkraut is timeless.
It can be a lonely world for a hound, be they a Hammer or a Puss. This sauer socialite spent the first 37 years of his fermentation (I’ve taken to calling life “fermentation” these days. I’m normalizing it here.) as a real hang out queen. I went to the people and built relationships large and small. I needed them to grow. As I’ve ripened, many of these relationships have fallen victim to time or distance or difference of opinion. My flavor and scent is becoming less complex, more 1 dimensional.
Now in France, I sit a world away from almost every relationship I have left. With only a beginner’s understanding of the language, new relationships are hard to come by. It’s like they can smell the German in me (or the kraut). Truly, there’s no one to blame but myself. I never made a habit of befriending the non-English speakers hanging out on the corner of the Red Bank Wawa. Though my tongue ain’t working it’s normal misfortunes here, my eyes still do some seeing and what they’re showing me is inspiring. Strip away the French tax code, their proclivity for arguing over pointlessness, their eagerness to criticize American foreign and domestic policy (without really understanding the issues or history, or how it benefits them), and France is my heaven. The world isn’t just a nail to the Hammer, and this old hound is seeing one very beautiful and envious thing in the French culture. Relationships.
Keeping it short, I am going to limit this conversation to non-marital relationships. France is a rudderless ship when it comes to nuclear families. A jarless pile of kraut. Some of it turns out ok, but most of it is rancid.
But non-marital relationships… well that’s a dog of a different color!
The French build 3-dimensional relationships (3DR) and they build relationships 3-dimensionally (R3D). A 3DR consists of multiple deep connections with someone. If I hound on it a bit, I realize many of my relationships are not that deep and therefore can’t withstand the stress of space, time, or growth. For the French, only relationships with depth are worth having.
R3Ds are the real cream of the societal crop. I can quickly put this into perspective with this fact – at family events, there is hardly ever a “kids table.” Age, income, education – these things, which present barriers in the US, do not seem to matter to the French. Everyone’s opinion, if they are coherent enough to vocalize it, is valuable. This results in incredibly tightknit communities and even tighter groups of friends that become like family. I saw my brother and sister-in-law open their 4-bedroom home to host 14 of their friends, children included, for 10 days. This was their vacation. Not some all-inclusive beach resort where you can isolate yourself – just the opposite. Mashed and packed tight in the juices of friends and family, after 10 days, you can be sure they all have the same smell no matter how differently they interpret the world.
I fear the myth of America as the Great Fermenter is cracking. America, for me, was always taking in any new variety or flavor of cabbage. A reaction occurred with protests and counter protests. These new flavors need to find their place afterall. But eventually the finished product is an amalgamation of everything that went in, always healthy, always delicious. But I see America’s smells become isolated and 1-dimensional. France – sauerkraut’s eternal enemy, seems to be the resting place of the ideals of KrautHounds. So it is with surprise and happiness, that I call France, and its people, Hounds.
-KrautHammer
What do relationships and the ‘Ol Puss have in common? They get more sour over time. And kraut too grows more intensely sauer with time, however its rise is not as precipitous as Ye Olde Puss, and nowhere near the trajectory at which a relationship can sour up. Envision your classic X-Y axis (you assholes paid attention in school, right?): Kraut rises steadily but slowly in sourness along the lateral time line, me I’m a solid 45-degree angle getting massively more bitter into eternity; but relationships, straight spikes at random intervals anywhere along the line that never come to rest. Never to be seen again.
Enough with this sad geometry though… Let’s talk broken vows, withering bonds of trust and shattered dreams! Have you reached the age yet where your naïve notions of monogamous marriages, reliable siblings, infallible parents, lifelong childhood friends and supportive bosses have all been corrected by life? If not, you just wait – there’s no order to it but at least one and likely all of these bogus ideas will sour quicker than my balls after a hard workout and no shower. Youth and old age are the only times for faith, middle life is for living and dealing. So, I’ll shoot straight as ‘Ol Puss is want to do. My accountant once told me ‘Partnerships are sinking ships’ – I didn’t just heed his cynical advice, I went ahead and applied it to every type of relationship I knew and found that it held true. Pessimist as I am, this one hit me hard – but I had to accept, all relationships end: some naturally, some explosively and some quietly. But end they do.
Ol’ Puss believe it or not is a homeowner now, and one thing owning a home has hammered …. Umm home, are the seasons – yes, the cycle of the year. We live in a place blessed or cursed to have all four. Fall, our current season used to be my favorite – the colors, the sports, the sweaters, the impending holidays. You know the deal. But as I soured, I realized what Fall is. Fall is death. Fall is decay. The precipitating event before an elderly person’s final days? Often, a fall! Leaves turn orange and brown not to bring enjoyment to our peepers, but to indicate to us their state of decomposition. Fear not, this does not remove all enjoyment of the season, or any other for that matter for me. I view them in my wizened and albeit sour way now. Winter: white, bare, barren, a clean cold slate. Spring: wetness, vitality, opening (does this sound sexual? It should, it is). Summer: a final seer, the height of life, full potential reached, peak everything, the pride before the… Fall.
Let’s bring this seeming year of an essay to a close, shall we. Let’s close the circle and connect the kraut strands into a thick rope of understanding. Relationships progress as regularly as the seasons do. They freeze, they grow, they peak and fall – but as the years do they keep on coming. They truth of their ultimate demise shouldn’t stop us from enjoying them in their various stages. The trick is to accept them, to ride the wave of them, to let them go when they’re gone – and to scan the horizon for the new ones surely coming. And might one test the fates and last forever? Stranger things have happened, I mean Old Sauerpuss seems to have ended this on a sweet note after all…
Tis the season,
Puss
