January 15, 2010. Friday.
Situation: Since I have to leave for work in D__ville tonight around 4:15, I decide to take Mwayla out early, around 1, so I’m not rushing around later. Moi is cleaning out the laundry room, and there are piles of stray tools and discarded shoes in the area where I put on my boots and snowsuit. I had spotted Mway on Moi’s bed, but as I’m suiting up she slips down into the kitchen, a little frazzled about where to pace around with all the junk on the floor. Moi comes out of the laundry room and remarks, “Jeez, you’re not going to need your snow suit today!” “No?” I say, deciding nevertheless to leave it on. “No, it’s really warm out there.” Then she hands me a few sticks of lumber she found in the laundry room. “Could you help me out and put these in the corn crib?”
State of the Path: First thing out on the porch I look for the fine stick Mway and I have been using, and not too surprisingly I don’t see it on the bench in the store of sticks. One day without taking her for a walk, I think to myself, and this good stick is already gone; but then I immediately spot it on the ground just beyond the porch. While I’m taking the sticks of lumber to the corn crib, Mway goes over to the chicken pen to bark at the chickens. There is indeed a lot less snow on the ground today; nothing under the trees, nothing in the fields. But there are still a few patches of snow and ice on the path, and I need to walk along just as carefully, using my fetch stick and walking stick like ski poles, as on any other day this past week. As is typical after a snow melt, I spot a lot of little dog turds along the path. I’m happy to have my snow suit on; it’s not yet too warm for it, and the snow suit, as much as it is protection against the cold, is equally protection against the briars and branches that jut at places into the path.
State of the Creek: In bug land as I’m approaching the creek, I hear a fine soft breeze, and notice that the wind is rustling in the pin oaks, which still are covered in brown leaves even at this late date in the winter. I hear the sound of birds cawing – these, I know, though I don’t see them, are crows, flying somewhere up on the hill beyond the creek. Though most of the snow is gone, the creek has still pretty much as much ice in it as the last time I’d seen it, though the ice seems to be in various stages of melting, appearing in a motley of colors and textures; and in several of the creek’s rocky areas the water is again flowing. I decide to take the side path along the skating pond; it’s fairly easy stepping over the feed channel, as the ice in it is still rock solid. I take a quick survey of the skating pond, as Moi had been skating in town earlier this week, and had mentioned our own failed skating pond and what it would take to make it usable. Indeed, I only glance quickly at the shrubs and thick grasses growing there, and don’t think too long about how much hard work it would be to clear those out.
The Fetch: I’m wondering, since I didn’t take her out yesterday, will Mway want to fetch the stick quite a few times today? Not so. Two fetches, and we’re on our way back home.
5 comments:
M? Just wanted to tell you, that picture of you on my computer screen – it’s ugly because of the bad angle of the close-up shot and because it’s out of focus. Moi has some better pictures of you on her iPhone, which she’s supposed to transfer to my computer sometime soon. When she does that, I’ll put one up on my blog page of you, and one of me. You’ll see how homely I look in my photo.
I’ll be looking forward to seeing it. Your bookshelves, at least what I have access to, contain no books by Australian writers. Is there any reason for this? M.
Maybe we just don't know if they're Austrailian or not. ~Moi
There’s no particular reason why I don’t have any on my bookshelves – I’ve just never been exposed much to the literature. Moi sometimes sings a song, “Waltzing Matilda,” original lyrics by Banjo Paterson, famous literary balladeer of Australia. The song contains words in Australian dialect: “swagman,” “billabong,” “coolabah tree,” “jimbuck.” She also one time had me learn an Irish folk tune “The Black Velvet Band,” which is about an Irishman betrayed by a woman then convicted of a crime and transported to the penal colony “Van Diemen’s Land,” an early European name for Tasmania. Apparently the poetry had at one time been heavily influenced by Irish convicts condemned to the isolated continent, resulting in such songs as “The Wild Colonial Boy,” another tune in Moi’s repertoire. I remember as a boy reading On the Beach by Nevil Shute. Shute wasn’t Australian, but the novel takes place in Australia, the last place on earth radiation reaches after a global nuclear war. The book made a great impression on me. In the late ‘70’s, early ‘80’s, Colleen McCullough’s book about the outback, The Thorn Birds, was a bestseller and made into a TV miniseries – I didn’t pay much attention to it though. Lately Australia seems to be cropping up a lot in American popular culture. There are the movies Crocodile Dundee, Mad Max, some of Jane Campion’s films, of course A Cry in the Dark, the sad case of Steve Irwin “The Crocodile Hunter,” the Subaru Outback, Foster’s Lager, Yellow Tail Shiraz.
I’ve been looking myself through that same encyclopedia which apparently you’ve been consulting and have set down on the floor. Two traditions in Australian poetry, Aboriginal and European. The author of the article clearly thinks the former is the better. The colonial poetic impulse often focuses upon adaptation between two cultures. The author cites one telling line: “diggers, drovers, bush race-courses, And on all the other pages, horses, horses, horses, horses.” M.
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