January 20, 2010. Wednesday.
Situation: Early this morning Mway wakes me up with her barking while Moi’s apparently getting ready to take her for her morning walk. I lie in bed listening to the loud yaps, which seem to go on for about five minutes, and then continue on outside. I am impressed that Mway has two totally different ways of responding to the people who take her for a walk, and I am grateful that she does not bark so much when I’m the one taking her out. I work tonight and have to leave around 4, so I take Mway out after Alma comes for her lesson at 3.
State of the Path: As soon as we get out of the house, Mway runs off down the path through the trees next to the summer house and, while I’m gathering up the fetching stick and the walking stick, I see her pee in the lane (the one that my father had put in) then run off toward the development. I think she’s maybe running after a squirrel, as I see one coming out of the hole on the roof of the summer house where the chimney has fallen off. Since she’s already headed on this route (instead of going toward the walled garden and the back acre), I decide that I’ll follow and take the path in this direction today, which is essentially the opposite direction we usually take. I walk down through the trees and into the lane behind the summer house, then head down the path that starts at all the logs that Paul Paulsen never got around to sculpting and then cuts down through the field between a bunch of multiflora shrubs on either side. I look down the lane and see it covered with black walnuts that have fallen there this past fall, and which is what probably attracts the squirrels to this part of our property. Before we managed to make paths at the back end of our property, this used to be the main way of getting down to the creek, but it’s not anymore and the path here is not as well worn as it used to be. Mway has wandered beyond the lane into the weeds at the front end of our land, and I have to call her. She comes running immediately and soon overtakes me as we head down toward the wild strawberry patch. She then veers to the left and scoots up the path that goes to the clearing where we fetch stick, but when she sees I’m heading straight down to the creek, she turns around and follows me toward the ridge surrounding bug land.
State of the Creek: Before we reach the ridge, Mway shoots ahead of me and I follow her down through the low area full of briars, stepping on that ant hill that I’ve mentioned before, and pass through the break in the ridge. As I’m walking along the edge of bugland, Mway dashes across it and heads into the trees along the creek, scaring out two birds – what look like doves to me – that come flying across bug land beating their wings so fast they sound like bees buzzing. I keep to the path, heading into the area of the red willow shrubs and stepping onto the plank of wood that sits in the drainage stream to bug land. Mway ventures off toward the skating pond, but soon turns around and follows me along the creek, quickly shooting way ahead of me. I enjoy walking in this opposite direction along the creek, as the vistas that open up to the creek’s bends and rocky cascades seem more dramatic as you walk from the shrubby area beneath the oaks toward the more open area just before the old deer stand at the corner of our property. I follow Mway back up through the field along the edge of bug land toward the maples and the wigwams. The entire ground here, which is saturated with water, seems to creak and crack as I walk across it.
The Fetch: I meet Mway up at the clearing beyond the sumacs and just behind the garden. With all the energy she showed already, I suspect that she might fetch the stick more times than she has lately. But I throw the stick twice in the direction of the electric pole, and Mway, keeping to her new regimen, fetches the stick, just twice.
6 comments:
Tomorrow, if you promise not to yell and holler, I will show you what your “dog-walking” journal could look like if you’d hunker down and study your Joyce more carefully. M.
OK, just to indulge you, my mouth, zipped.
Why wait until tomorrow? I’ll have it for you before the end of the day today. M.
OK.
Exempluary 20, 2010. Wednesday.
Situation: Tensely, stout but tightly wound Mway circled the kitchen table, upon which Moi plunked the keys of a laptop. Her husband dressed himself by the door, his balloonish big snowsuit swishing as he put in arms and legs, then pulled it over pudgy shoulders clumsily.
-- Ascendit ad caelos.
He grunted. First one rubber boot, then the other, thumped upon the pine floor.
-- Come, you fearless Tooth.
He picked up his gloves, but immediately placed them back down, with lazy clumps shuffled across the kitchen to the sink. Come come on. Now’s not the time to be getting. If needed: the creek’s along the way. Mway waits to hear the boots returning, the clatter of the knob, the squeak of the latch, the jamb’s exhalation. Huff. He’s only now just filling up his glass. Huff. Huff. If you stand in front of it and eventually they open it, it is a door, if not, a wall. Can’t wait. Huff. I must. Aarf. Aaarrf. Aaaarrrff.
State of the Path: Ineluctable modality of the olfactive: at least that if no more, thought through my nose. Signatures of all things I am here to read, printscent, holefume, burrowodor. A roiling pool that covers everything, leafspawn and weedwrack. Snow highlights it, traps it in tracks. Colors Kemp and Gilbert found. Sour sweet salty bitter orange red brown green. The bald man shortchanged it but if George Rowe had lifted his nostrils he could have avoided Katoochquay’s arrow. Did he go to Heaven, Himmel, or Tschipey Hacki? Der Tod Gewiss, ungewiss der Tag, die Stunde auch nie man wiseen mag frin fuerchte. Still, better keep e and e open. Huh, we’re going that way today? Precisely the reason. She turned, bounded back. Cumming. Pockets of gas, bogs of brime, fumaroles spewing pastels. Nostrils lapping. Lapin. Laplolloplick. Crushed walnut shells, brittle ashleaves, frozen grassblades, broken twigs, rotting, moss, fungus, humus, mold. We’ll trap them in the pipe, he looked at me, words that never needed be spoken, he at one end, me at the other so let the humans laugh we will bark till we drool know right where they are there till our swires be ywimpled crouching the muffled sound the mordant key and the screech owl and the vampires hoot must be terrified have them trapped we will bark even so that wayfaring man stand by the housedoor at night’s oncoming becalling as the sun sets yes the wordless yes as the moon rises yes throughout the starless night our hearts pounding mad O yes we will bark till hoarse yes Yes.
Entrance to Moi’s fallingdown wigwam. The maple sapling frame is exposed, the bark walls sagging over articles once housed inside: a pallet for a bed, handsaw, flashlight, popcorn basket.
MWAY
(Transformed into the Flying Head, she expounds, with allusions to Aristotle, Aquinas, the oral traditions of the Iroquois, and Einstein, on the question whether light has an odor and if so whether that odor varies with the wavelength.)
Reflect a moment.
GREGOR
(Transformed into the Headless Dog, he thrashes, mute, among the briars, finally throws himself against the wigwam, which collapses in a heap of dust.)
Dependable Old Sol beamed down upon what promised to be a daringly tangy afternoon, bringing so much warmth to such a fine day that even old box turtle asleep for the winter in the mud thought for a moment about poking his head and legs out of his cozy shelter and waddling up from the ground to take a good look around. Mway was not frightened of any animal, with the possible exception of turtles, so it was not to be accounted a misfortune that when the drowsy terrapin did eventually stick his head out just a wee bit he immediately pulled it back in as fast as he could.
More to come. M.
Exempluary 20, 2010, continued.
State of the Creek:
Ruby by sapphire heard ironrilling, trilling plplplplplplpl.
Chips, picking chips of lime and sandstone, pecks.
Pause.
When that red red bob bob goes blue blue who who.
Trickling tricks.
Patapat pat. Pebbles of quartz and pyrite.
Have you anything to say to me?
War cry. Plplplplplplpl. Caw on me anytime. An oak leaf pirouettes.
Ruby by sapphire, Miss Cardinal’s head by Miss Bluejay’s head, over the crossrun branch of the pin oak tree, heard above the rill the clunk of ironbound paws.
Bye bye.
The Fetch: Upon reaching the clearing what were the duumvirate’s mutual expectations? Mway openly anticipated that Gregor would throw a wooden projectile while Gregor covertly assented to throwing it. What trajectory did the projectile follow on average? Lo! Gregor yclept the Great plucked as a straw the trunked tree from this compliant earth and heaved it hurling across yon northern sky, Mighty hight Mway thence as a hundred steeds galloping bearing down wherst whence hence it befallen it plummeted with a boom measured at 160 decibels as estimated by Clare Kratzer from the wave height of the displaced fluid in a water bucket he was at that very moment carrying to his cow barn about a mile down the road some.
STICK STUCK IN SHRUB SHE STICKS TO IT
It dangled, and she barked, and still it dangled, and she barked again. She leapt, and it tipped slightly, but still it dangled. She barked and barked and leapt and leapt and eyed the man barking who was coming barking to tip the stick barking so it fell and when it fell she chewed off its bark.
On what did she reflect upon her return to the domicile? Mwayla lapped or gulped with relish almost anything they gave her. She liked platters stained with egg yolk and breadcrumbs, a roasting pan crusted with crisp drippings, fat scraps and gristle, a nutty biscuit, butter-coated worm pills, the occasional meat morsel, noodle strand, or potato chip that fell to the floor. But most of all she liked the crunchy bits of dry dog food that rattled dependably into her dish after a walk, which however bland in taste nevertheless emitted a faint aroma of sugary sweet cat shit.
Tomorrow: the Proteus chapter, as if you had written it. M.
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