“There isn’t a word to describe me. I guess, technically, I could be called a pre-operative transpeciesal, but I like to call myself trans-special.”
Those are the opening lines to my autobiographical documentary Small Dog Thinks Big or Plush Toy at the Academy.
A state of transition is perhaps the best, neither human or dog and at the same time both human and dog: secretly having the knowledge of dog when viewed as human and the knowledge of human when viewed as dog. To not belong to a definable category opens up possibilities—the possibility of being the most complicated dog or the possibility of being the most non-judgmental, irresistibly simple person. Why have I chosen to alter my frame of reference? Because the act of becoming something other is a way of shifting the definition of objects. When I finally become a dog I re-define what it means for me to be human.