May 16, 2010. Sunday.
Situation: Work all day today, and unfortunately when I get home it’s still light out. Mway’s outside when I arrive and greets me enthusiastically at the back porch. I let her in the house, and inside she starts pacing around the kitchen, huffing and panting with excitement. Moi, seeing her in this state of anxiousness, asks her “Why don’t you bark, Mwayla?” I say, “She knows that I don’t like her to bark.” Mway continues pacing, huffing and puffing, as I put on my walking clothes. Again Moi asks her, “Why don’t you bark?” And I explain, “Mway responds differently to you and me. She barks when you’re taking her for a walk, but she knows I don’t like her to bark when I’m taking her for one.”
State of the Path: I ask Moi, before Mway and I take off, if she’s noticed the new flower in bug land growing among the point blue-eyed grass. She says she hasn’t, but tells me to bring back a specimen for her to look at. Outside I note that some of the hedge garlic is now chin, and even above-the-chin, high. Down by the wigwams, I notice what I think is the first white flower on a multiflora bush – the bush is growing beneath a grape vine, which (if I remember now correctly) must be growing up on one of the maples. Other than that I’m unable to note anything today except to remark to myself that I probably only know the names of less than 1% of the plants that have come up so far this spring – the land on which I’m walking seems to be such a kaleidoscope of vegetation that it would take me months to catalogue all that is growing here. I also note that, despite all these plants coming up, the path which Moi, Mway and I’ve walked so far this year is still apparent and walkable, with even bare patches of ground in parts of it, and this is so partly because of the water that gushed down the path this winter and spring, which gushed down the path for the very reason that that’s where we walked. Coming though bug land toward the pines, I pick one of the flowers Moi asked me to bring back. When I pass through the opening in the ridge around bug land, it falls out of my pocket, and I have to go back and pick another flower.
State of the Creek: I note that in some of the pools of water in the creek, the moss growing along the bottom and among the rocks looks very dark and thick. On the crest of the skating pond, I hear a loud croak coming from the creek, which sounds to me like the croak of a bullfrog – but I don’t see anything.
The Fetch: I bring along the “pro-quality” stick, because that’s the only one I saw on the bench on the back porch. Despite all her previous excitement, Mway only makes one fetch today. Back in the house, I show Moi the flower specimen. She doesn’t know exactly what it is, but thinks it might be a kind of point blue-eyed grass.
2 comments:
So your concepts were expanding as well.
Yes. That’s important to point out. Not only was I assimilating words to concepts I already had, I was learning new concepts as I was learning words. With difficulty, admittedly – I resisted for a long time thinking of riding as a thing, but there it was, that word “a” telling me that it was. Before I had only walked, now I was also going on a walk, and when you have a walk, the walk itself can also start doing things. M.
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