Relationships built on verbs

It's funny how sometimes you come across an idea that seems kind of unique, intriguing and well expressed and then....you come across the same idea equally well-expressed in another forum. Four days ago, I read an interesting piece by Chris Suellentrop in the NYT about the way owning a dog delivers the same kind of satisfactions yielded by a well-loved video game, Joystick or Leash, It's All About Love.

In defining the satisfactions of dog ownership (and those satisfactions basically are similar to the satisfactions that come with cats), Mr. Suellentrop writes:

"Sometimes Wookiee and I look at each other, heads cocked, unable to express our feelings for the other except through simple actions performed routinely, year upon year upon year: retracing the same blocks of our neighborhood each morning, playing fetch (shhhhh, illegally) in the park in the early evening, falling asleep with our sides touching, to warm ourselves in the air-conditioned night. The characters are unremarkable. The setting is ordinary. The action is dull. But like all games, owning a dog is about the quiet magic of doing. The love comes from the doing."

Relationships defined, established and sustained by the sharing of actions. The character, personality, or inner being of the other party to the relationship is not nearly as important. Shared actions come first and cement the bond? Interesting, I thought.

At lunch Saturday, I read an excerpt in the New Yorker of Zadie Smith's new novel, NW which I eagerly await. It details the friendship of two childhood friends, Leah Hanwell and Keisha Blake. Getting at the same idea as Suellentrop, Smith writes:

"It had never occrured to Keisha Blake that her friend Leah Hanwell was in possession of a particular type of personality. As with most children, theirs was a relation based on verbs, not nouns. Leah Hanwell was a person willing and available to do a variety of things that Keisha Blake was willing and available to do. Together they ran, jumped, danced, sang, bathed, colored-in, rode bikes, pushed a Valentine under Nathan Bogle's door, read magazines, shared chips, sneaked a cigarette, read Cheryl's diary, wrote the wowrd "FUCK" on the first page of a Bible, tried to get "The Exorcist" out of the video shop, watched a prostitute or a loose woman or a girl just crazy in love suck someone off in a phone box, found Cheryl's weed, found Cheyl's vodka, shaved ....."