The Baker Dancer

One of the objects I studied at university was a Hellenistic bronze statuette called the Baker Dancer. She is a strange little woman wearing a thick, richly pleated dress with a long, transparent mantle over it that covers even her head. Her face is covered by a tight veil with eye-holes. The head is tilted, giving the impression of movement. One hand draws a fold of the mantle to her face, while the other arm is outstretched and displays the fringed hem of the garment to good effect. Her free leg kicks out a bit and the booted toe peeks out under the dress. She is very undancerly by modern standards -- chunky under the voluminous garments. It is the free hip that juts out awkwardly higher than the standing hip in a non-balletic, off-balance pose, belying the popular interpretation that she is spinning, and yet what is she doing? She is eminently realistic, and yet the entirely mannered work of the invisible artist. She is exotic, gorgeous, mesmerising, infuriatingly enigmatic, familiar, strange, and new every time you see her.

Why am I wittering on about the Baker Dancer? Because you remind me of her in many ways, Allie. I was admiring your mask this morning. Some call your face "dirty." It is one of the many ways in which you don't conform to the Malamute standard, bless your heart. You almost have goggles, but they are a soft, taupeish gray and flow gently into a Mardi Gras mask that extends down the side of your face like batwings, shading into reddish browns, golds, grays, creams and white. It is as though you were wearing a veil of gossamer (not that I know what that is, but it's traditional) pulled tight across your face and shimmering in many shades against your contours. You could not be more gorgeous. Your expressive brown eyes are set in high relief by their halos of white. The little hairs swirl in perfect order to create exquisitely molded landscapes, some white hairs marching off into lush eyelashes. It's amazing how the merest twitch of those tiny muscles can transform your face from Contended Dog At Rest to Poor Starving Baby Must Have Cheese Now ...

You are so familiar to me, and yet completely enigmatic. I don't speak dog, let alone Malamute, and you are so much of an individual that I don't think I would get you even if I did. Sometimes your basic body language is clear even to me -- Must Go Out Now, or Take Me To Work. Other times I'm just stumped. And when I look in your eyes, there's so much someone there, but I have no idea what you're thinking, other than Stupid Human. I'm always asking you, How high? and you persistently refuse to tell me, Jump.