While out with Bodhi and watching him pee against a lamp post, I was idly pondering how annoying it must be to have to mark your territory every single day. Territorial pissings are something mankind has kind of gotten over during evolution. We now have other ways of marking our territory, I suppose. Locks on our doors, car alarms, hedges around our gardens, border patrols. It’s the new way of territorial pissings, I thought.
But then I walked past a skating park and I saw all those people who tagged their names on it, leaving their mark in a completely different kind of name. And I had to think about the fort in Valkenburg that we visited during our camping vacation with the boys. It was made of loam (mergel, in dutch) which is really soft stone, sandy-like, with a yellow colour. The fort had been there since forever, and in the past century, when it had become a bit of a tourist item, hundreds of people had grabbed a key or something else that was tougher than the mergel, and they’d left their messages in there for eternity. Sure; it won’t be eternity, but the fort will outlive us all by a fair margin. Isn’t it great that in a hundred years people will gaze upon your message saying ‘feyenoord forever’ or ‘A <3 B’ or ‘C was here’?
I suppose that deep down inside, everyone wants to leave their mark.
Through messages in loam, through writings, through our children.
Nobody wants to be forgotten when they’re gone. Which is why my puppy pisses against lamp posts.
I just wanted to share that thought with you guys.