April 16, 2010. Friday.
Situation: It goes without saying that I don’t record everything that happens on a walk in this journal. Most of the time the omission is by choice and necessity, but sometimes I forget to record something I wanted to. For example, yesterday I wanted to mention that I saw the white posts along the path where Moi has planted the Douglas firs, or whatever evergreen trees they are that Ezra gave her. I also wanted to mention that I saw another, what I guess was, a fritillary butterfly. Today out the kitchen window I saw a tiger swallowtail passing by. I work tonight, and this morning while I was in the music room preparing for tonight, Moi and the Boy interrupted me to tell me the amazing news that the Boy got confirmation that he’s been hired to work at CBS in NYC; he’ll be starting out in an entry-level position as a scheduler. This afternoon Moi has gone down to Jazz’s to help her with some of her wedding plans; I’ve just been in my bedroom reading and relaxing. I left my door open, and Mway quietly came in and was resting on the floor. It’s now 2:15, and I’m ready to take her for a walk.
State of the Path: I find the new fetching stick where Mway dropped it yesterday in front of the porch. It works fine doubling as a walking stick. Out at the old orchard I now realize that, whatever the mystery tree is, there are two more of them just beyond where the monkey vine dangles, hemming in the path just across from two honeysuckle or Russian olive shrubs. You can’t pass this area without brushing against the leaves of the trees and shrubs. Oddly, or perhaps only oddly to me, these other trees never had the catkin-like flowers like the other specimen, at least that I noticed, and you’d think I would’ve noticed them, but the leaves are the same: a compound of three. Just before the jack-in-the-pulpits, I break off a number of multiflora stems that have started jutting into the path. With the other stick I might have been able to beat them back, but the new stick is too light, and probably would break apart. The muddy and soggy ground in bug land is starting to dry up a little, both near the seeps and along the ridge. I notice even more spots of may apples, particularly two areas near the maples and along the back hedgerow. Most of the trees now have their leaves, except, still, the ashes and black walnuts, whose gray branches stick up aridly above the new greenery. The pin oaks before the creek, also, don’t have leaves; their dead brown leaves stayed on the branches most of the winter, and now they are late in getting their new leaves in spring. I see a number of maple saplings coming up, even one in front of the skating pond, recognizable now as such, because I do at least know what maple leaves look like.
State of the Creek: Where I crossed the creek a while back to look at the skunk cabbages, the water is low enough so that now there’s even a bed of small rocks to step on. So I walk across the creek and dip under the wire fence to take a look at the cabbages, whose leaves are outspreading. I note that there are even more cabbages along a little swale that comes down off of Hutchinson
The Fetch: Mway fetches the stick I’d say about 7 or 8 times. This supports my theory that the other stick, however much I liked it, was too heavy for her tastes.
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Difficulties in Connecting Word with Picture
Although the canine comes to accept the symbolic nature of reading material, its indexical treatment of distributions of reading material and pictures has been up to this time the only means it had of arriving at the meanings of those distributions of reading material, and we must now look briefly at some of the difficulties the canine must overcome in this process. First we must mention that the canine, as a being possessing only rudimentary speech, has no interest in the phonetic components of words: its approach to them, as we mentioned previously, is at first olfactive, by which means, with much oracular exertion, it comes to also apprehend them visually. As such it also tends to approach the words as wholes; only much later, when it must grapple with grammatical conventions, does it concern itself with letters. The canine thus first learns the meanings of words by associating them with pictures, and, since it is teaching itself, its approach, especially at first, is often haphazard. Much of the reading material it will peruse will not have been designed for pedagogical purposes, and thus the canine will be susceptible to many errors. For example, early in its perusal of reading materials, it may come across a page from a newspaper advertising automobiles. The canine may interpret the photographs of automobiles on the page as icons of those machines of transport with which it is familiar, but the most conspicuous caption for the photographs may happen to be the word phrase “$0 Down Payment. 0% Interest for a Year,” so the canine will for a long time believe that “$0 Down Payment. 0% Interest for a Year” is the signifier for “automobile.” Or even worse, the canine may interpret the photographs of automobiles as an icon meaning “now we are going to the monster’s house,” and so it will mistake “$0 Down Payment. 0% Interest for a Year” as the signifier for “now we are going to the monster’s house.” These are only two examples of errors the canine might make, and it is safe to say it will make thousands, perhaps millions, if not gazillions, of similar errors. Fortunately, the underemployed family dog, as we have mentioned before, will be in a position where it is likely to meet with reading material designed specifically for pedagogical purposes, namely, illustrated books for pre-school children, including illustrated dictionaries and encyclopedias, and it will be able to correct many of its errors. Even with such pedagogical materials, however, it may still make what might be called metonymic errors, mistaking, for example, “face” for head, “hear” for ear, or “dog” for stupid nuisance (if the picture for dog should be that of a white German Shepard). But at this tip, the K-9 is heading the same puzzle as Hey Pup! would head, and by precipitous supporting oneself on the feet in an erect position solidly and crucial me-tests, it will, over the series of doses of separate years, neutralize these sinful decrees of a motel until connected a a of to to of their number basic reasonable corresponding signifiers signifieds degree accuracy has it.
Since graduating from college in May 2009, the Boy had been primarily working for the important job creator Dynamic Wings.
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