Just One Thing with Michael Bird

Michael Bird’s essay “Tidewrack” gives us a moving meditation on the nature of help. Here he shares just one thing about the piece:

“Through a story from my past involving a seal pup, I wanted to show how caring can lead to harm. Sometimes, a good heart, the best intentions, and a practical skill can combine to make a bad situation worse. This also became a fascinating inversion of ‘White-Fanging,’ the use of cruelty to be helpful, named after the boy in White Fang, who threatens the wolf-dog he loves with a stick, to force the animal back into the wild.”

 

In this picture, I am hanging upside down in a room full of board games. My hand stretches out to stroke a dog, who sleeps in a basket. To my left is a painting of other dogs playing poker.

Photo credit: Matt Goias 

SLMblog, just one thing