Last night it was cold. I was pissed at the dog. Standing in the open doorway, calling. Damn dog would not come. I had to go out and get her. She slunk out of the dark and back into the house, dripping guilt. I growled. She stayed away from me. Next morning I found the dead rabbit – one leg chewed off. The rabbit foot off to one side. Big God damn rabbit. Bigger than the head of the shovel. Major dog triumph. A life of failed rabbit chasing. Now this! Snapped its neck in her jaws. Yes that soft-mouth-retriever jaw changed gears – turned fast, quick, deadly. Perfect catch. I can hear the cheers from the dog stadium. Yes Yes. What a kill! At full stretch! In mid-air!

I force myself to look at the dead rabbit’s eyes. Beautiful. The body so present, so physical. The light turned off. I think of all those European still life paintings. All the time spent looking. Every hair – every detail. Time with the corpse – measuring – rendering – tricks of the trade. The research.  George Stubbs taking the animal apart – the beautiful horses. Peeling back the layers. The drawings reeking of death. The discovered information, the searching, the rigor of it all. Putting up with the smell. Handling the dead weight. Seeing the flesh turn. As if knowledge of the bones, the sinews, muscles, without life in them could open the door. No room for the energy of the hand, no variance in line that is held hostage to faithful observation. No memory of life. Just this. The remains.

Joseph Beuys told the History of Art to a dead hare. He was a performance man – a shaman – consciousness shifter. He showed tenderness as he handled the body. He came out of World War Two Germany. Out of the remains – the unbearable, unbelievable remains.

I had to go back for the rabbit’s foot. The foot now an object unto itself. Strange how the eyes showed no sense of loss, no fear, no evidence of parting, no confusion. Just a frozen moment – a moment so brief – so minute – it left no room for life to play out. A snapshot – no time to transition. Just hot then cold as the frost and death stiffened the body overnight. In the arctic it could last a millennium – like those Still Lives – totally present. 

Joseph Beuys told a story. How he was shot down in his fighter plane over Russia. Frozen stiff and dying, he told how he was found by local peasants, wrapped in felt and animal fat, and brought back to life. As he told the story his eyes moved – shifted. He knew, what artists know –  that when you stand in the remains and nothing moves – when the rabbit’s foot is just a rabbit’s foot and the dead horse on the table is just a dead horse on the table – when it seems like you have no place to go – YOU MAKE IT UP. You invent. You follow the leads. You remember the horse – how huge it was – the strength in its body – the powerful animal. You know that the dog remembers the speed of the rabbit. The moment. The kill. The body taken away with the shovel. Like Joseph Beuys you wrap it all in felt and animal fat. You follow the twitch of your rabbit foot mind.