May 2, 2010. Sunday.
Situation: Work all day today, but when I get home it is still light out, so I take Mway for a walk, about 6:30. At work today the gypsy moth caterpillars were all over the sidewalk. I’d go outside to smoke, and pretty soon someone would say “you have a caterpillar on your cheek,” or I’d go back inside and someone would pick a caterpillar off my sports jacket. In past years we’ve had the tent caterpillars crawling all over our place, but this year I haven’t seen any. It may be that the chickens have eaten the larvae – that’s one benefit of having chickens running around: they clear the lawn of bugs.
State of the Path: It was suppose to thunderstorm this evening, but it hasn’t, though there are dark clouds overhead and it’s humid. Half the dandelions in the yard have gone to seed. The hedge garlic, ever higher and more prevalent around the barn foundation and pig pen, is emitting – just as its name indicates – a smell of garlic. The wild mustard is high. And compared to yesterday, the grass seems much higher, though on the path there are still some spots of bare ground, particularly where water ran a lot this past winter, like down by the wigwams. I’ve brought my Audubon wildflower book with me, and I hike down the main path to the creek to identify the two new flowers I noticed yesterday – Moi has said she thinks the yellow one is a buttercup and the purple ones are wild geraniums. On my way, I see, lying across the path, the gnarled stick that the Boy had planted in bug land. Yesterday I had seen it in the yard, and I wonder why Moi (if it was Moi) plucked it out of the ground and why it’s now being moved around. I also take note of the red willow shrub that I’ve been stepping on for weeks now; I step on it again today, but it springs right back up; full of leaves and as robust as any other plant. Down at the creek, I leaf through my Audubon. I think Moi is right: the yellow flower is a buttercup, and I notice more growing along the bank, almost hidden by honeysuckle bushes; the purple ones are wild geraniums, and there is another patch of them that have sprung up on our side of the creek. I stop to look at the pink honeysuckle bush; this would be either a Tartarian or a bella honeysuckle bush, I’m not sure which – whichever one does not have a hairy underside to its leaves like the Morrow’s honeysuckle. After I look at the bush, I look up at the top story of the tall trees engulfed by the shrubs; although it’s hard to see so high up, the leaves appear to be coming out in the shape of some sort of ash. A third tree, just down from the two highest, appears to be an oak. Coming up to the strawberry patch, I look to my right, and see, just past a maple tree, another pink honeysuckle bush.
State of the Creek: As soon as we get down to the creek, Mway wades in to cool off. As I’m looking at the buttercup, I hear what I think is Moi’s strange noise – a kind of trilling sound. It seems to be coming from up the creek, somewhere along Hutchinson
The Fetch: I’ve brought along a smaller stick today, one that I found in the music room. After about five tosses, Mway plays the game where she holds the stick in her mouth, and chomps on it and huffs, until I tell her to drop it. She drops it, and I toss it again, expecting her to continue on for a little longer. But she brings it and holds it in her mouth again; I decide I’m not going to play the game again, and I turn around and head down the path back to the yard, Mway first following me, then passing me by, to get to the yard first, as she likes to do.
2 comments:
So you end part Part ! with the image of the canine fumbling around with reading materials, not even quite knowing where the beginning of a book might be. I guess this is where your Part ?, or Oler >, must begin. How does a dog learn where a book begins?
Iconicity, basically. Ironically, once the canine comes to accept the symbolic nature of words, it’s iconicity that propels it deeper into the symbolic realm. Iconicity is any aspect of language that mirrors the happenings of the world outside of language. Language tends to reflect the order of things: (1) things that happen together appear closest together in language, (2) as things happen so they appear in language, (3) the person who does the things appears first in language, and (4) what the thing the person does and who or what it is done to appears next. This is iconicity as it pertains to syntax – and I’m perhaps jumping the gun, but I expect we’ll delve into that soon. But there is a certain iconicity to the book also. The first thing that the reader sees – the cover of the book – is the beginning of the book. The next thing she sees – the first page – is the next thing in the book, and so on, throughout the pages of the book. The trouble for the canine is that, because it can’t hold a book in its paws very well and has to root around in it with its nose, the first thing it usually sees is a page in the middle of a book, and therefore it has a very poor conception of where a book begins. What the canine has to do, I believe, is step back a minute and ask itself, what is the very first thing I do when I go outside to read scents outdoors? This question can be misleading, though, because a dog usually doesn’t start sniffing around until it’s already in the middle of the lawn or the field, and this can reinforce its misconception that a book begins in the middle. The canine has to consider very carefully “what is really the first thing I have to do?” The right answer of course is “I have to go through a door.” When the canine recognizes this then it realizes that the cover of a book is like a door, and this is where the book really begins. M.
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