Dear Reader,

When Lauren Berland wrote Cruel Optimism, I wonder if she had my dog in mind. Rory is a cattle dog mutt, and she yearns for rough country and the herds of animals our zoning laws proscribe. We play fetch three times a day, and Rory thinks that every bird and squirrel that happens through our yard is on the menu for a dog that’s fleet of foot and stout of heart. But Rory has hurt her leg. She needs surgery. And because we live in a land where care is controversial, where even we great apes are given great big bills when we get hurt, there is no hope for furry little friends with ruined knees.

Rory, however, doesn’t seem to know she’s hurt. She lives oblivious to ligaments and doctors’ bills. Her sole desire is to fly pell-mell through the yard, to feel the freedom of her four legs, to tear each squeaker free from the backyard critters she has yet to catch. Berland calls our optimism cruel when what we want is the very thing that brings us harm. When Rory dreams, she whimpers softly and twitches her paws. I know that in those dreams she is sprinting wild and free, each whimper a bark-screamed prayer to whatever god of dog will let her catch her garden prey at last. Beyond hope and lust and longing is that insatiable urge to run and chase and frolic. Only then might she slip the surly bonds of dog and touch the face of god.

Rory remains cruelly optimistic that she might feel the wind in her fur and the chase in her heart. In theorizing cruel optimism, Berlant strives to understand how “certain attachments to what counts as life come to make sense or no longer make sense, yet remain powerful as they work against the flourishing of particular and collective beings.” Rory remains incapable of such brainwork. She can only sit and wonder why we carry her up and down the stoop and place her gently in the grass, wonder why we now refuse to play fetch, to let her run free, to love her like we used to. And her bewilderment and grief make me wonder what obstacles my own optimism has set in place for me. I might marvel and be dumbfounded at the fault lines hidden in my human heart, had I only eyes to see.

Like Pablo Neruda wrote, “some day I'll join him right there,” but in the meantime, dear reader, thank you, as always, for reading,

Leon Perniciaro, Editor

Haven Spec Magazine

© Leon Perniciaro