April 12, 2010. Monday.
Situation: Work late morning, early afternoon. When I get home, I disappoint Mway by putting on my boots and father’s safari helmet, and then going out the door, not to take her for a walk, but to mow the lawn. I mow most of the lower part of the yard, edging around the trash that Moi has neglected to burn, and, after picking up willow and sumac branches blown down over winter, spot mow on top. At places the flowering gill-of-the-ground is about 8 inches high, and the Pennsylvania bittercress is 2 feet high. I keep the blade on the mower high, because Moi and I both like these weeds growing in the lawn. The bittercress probably won’t grow back, but the gill-of-the-ground will continue to flower, along with the blue violets. Unfortunately, compared to our McNeighbors, we don’t get a lot of dandelions in our yard – we would like more because the flowers, dipped in egg and rolled in breadcrumbs then panfried in oil, are delicious. My mower goes over the few dandelions without touching them – I look forward to more coming up soon. When I get done, about 4:45, I go into the house to get Mway for her walk. As I pick up her fetching stick off the bench, she barks, releasing her pent-up frustration from having to wait for me for an hour while I mowed the lawn. I decide not to bring my walking stick today – the snow’s gone so I don’t have to worry too much about slipping, and the fetching stick, if I need any kind of walking stick, will work as one for most of the walk.
State of the Path: The may apples, in the four or five spots where they’re growing, have all now spread out their parasol like leaves. I look again at the mystery tree – shaking my head as I note how it has come up crooked, and almost looks like a mutant shrub. Redwing blackbirds are screeching in the back hedgerow, about the only birds I see today, except for a turkey vulture flying over Hutchinson
State of the Creek: The water is low enough now that it’s hard to hear any gurgling over the rocks. The only place I hear the water over the rocks is at a narrow place down by the oaks. Beyond that, the creek makes a bend, and there is a pool of water, even deeper than the pool behind the log jam. I see minnows in the pool, and gnats swirling above it. This is also where Moi and I saw the snake the other day, leaping out of some leaf and branch debris. I suspect this is where the mallards like to come to feed, but I haven’t seen them since Mway and I chased them out the other day.
The Fetch: For all her frustration while waiting for me to mow the lawn, Mway only fetches the stick once.
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The Material Aspects of Words from the Standpoint of the Canine’s Nostalgia and Anxiety
To the human intelligence, a printed word presents only a visual aspect: the shape of letters and the arrangement of those letters. But for the canine, a printed word presents both a visual aspect (admittedly not in as sharp relief as that for a human) and, because of the canine’s superior sense of smell, an olfactory aspect. All writing (outside, of course, the various forms of electronic and photographic media) bears an odor of the medium of inscription, whether it be the graphite of a pencil, the ink of a pen, or the various inks used in printing. Sometimes this odor dissipates over time and can play no part in the olfactory aspect of the printed word. But the page upon which the word is printed also has an odor, most relevantly an odor of decay, and this odor of decay shows a slight variation between the inked and the uninked portions of the page: the inked word consequently stands out from the background of the page with its own distinct odor, and the canine will notice across the page pockets of odor different from the overall odor of the page. The presence of these pockets of odor is a first step in the signaling to the canine that there is a sign system under its very nose. This first step toward such a signal is simultaneously reinforced by the visual appearance of the printed words as the canine first encounters them. Upon its first (and many subsequent) encounters, the canine does not yet distinguish letters and words but (most advantageously because it serves as a point in common with what the canine already knows) only markings, or more precisely, tracks of ink, similar to tracks of paw prints in mud or snow, each containing pockets of odor distinguishable from a background odor. In a word, it encounters signs like the signs it finds in the field. In its initial encounters with these signs, it accordingly tries to treat them as indexical signs, and in the manner it comports with signs in the field it begins to search for an object to which they point. Finding none, it soon realizes that the odors are confined to the page under its nose, to the object that it is thus far treating as a cushion, and it realizes that its conduct in the field is inappropriate with respect to these particular odors. This realization that the odors are limited in extent by the boundary of the page and that they refer to no object in the surrounding physical environment is a second, though not sufficient, step toward the recognition that the object under nose is a container of signs.
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