June 19, 2010. Saturday.
Situation: As it turned out, yesterday I never did any work in the afternoon. I needed work on the brakes of my car and took it to Sears because they could work on it right away; but they couldn’t obtain all the necessary parts, so one of the workers gave me a ride home, and Ezra drove me and my equipment to and from work that night. Moi had gone down to Jazz’s with Atlas yesterday in the afternoon; she came back early this morning, and she and the Boy (visiting from NYC) have gone to breakfast, I believe, after taking the Boy’s car to Kantz’s for an inspection. Right now Atlas is downstairs sitting in front of the kitchen door, whimpering and barking occasionally, because I think he’d like to go outside. Mway is lying down in the hallway just outside the office here. I already took her out this morning to fetch stick in the back yard and then fed her (before Atlas arrived), but now I believe she’s waiting for a walk. I’m waiting to hear from Moi and the Boy.
State of the Path: Moi and the Boy come back about 11, and Moi, in a cheerful mood for the first time in days, decides to take both dogs for a walk, keeping Atlas on a leash, and not bringing the stick. I follow along. Moi seems to have gained some confidence that she can better control Atlas, as Atlas pulls her along down to the creek. Both dogs take dumps and pees; Mway dumps on the board in the path near the wigwams. Moi wonders whether she can take Atlas off his leash. I tell her that I’ve taken both dogs on a walk before without leashes, but that was back at Christmas time, and that I had a stick as a means to put a leash back on Atlas before we came to the house. Moi decides to keep the leash on Atlas.
State of the Creek: At the tree stand, Mway goes into the water, and Atlas follows, with Moi behind him and managing not to get pulled into the creek. I eat some of the raspberries that I see have ripened (I would eat more, but the seeds stick in my teeth). Farther down the creek, Mway goes again in the water, and Atlas follows again. This time Moi lets go of the leash, because the bank is high, but she’s able to grab it back when Atlas follows Mway back to the bank.
The Fetch: On the way to the clearing, I ask Moi if she knows what the yellow wildflowers are (the ones I first noticed yesterday or the day before, and which are coming out now in more numbers). She says, very provisionally, that they might be a type of crown vetch, but I don’t think so, and unfortunately I don’t have the leisure today to try to identify them. Up at the clearing, Mway stops in anticipation of me throwing a stick, but of course we have none. At the walled garden, after Moi and Atlas disappear from sight, I pull a stick from one of the dead sumacs on top of the barn wall, and Mway and I venture out onto the path again. I take the side path along the orchard, just for the sake of a day’s trampling of the weeds, but then we turn back to the clearing. Mway fetches the sumac stick as though she hadn’t already fetched a stick previously this morning. I watch as the stick falls and rustles the goldenrod before it hits the ground, and Mway zeroes in on where it landed, then dashes back, with the goldenrod wiggling in her wake. Where I stand to toss the stick, I look approvingly at how much of the goldenrod is staying smashed down.
Addendum: Later in the day, before Moi and I both go to work, we take the dogs for another walk. Or rather, the Boy takes Atlas for a long walk down to the creek, and when he gets back, I simply take Mway out in the back yard to fetch stick. I use a small stick I find on the bench, perhaps one from a lilac bush. After a few fetches, Mway starts to chew at the stick, until first it breaks apart in half and finally, after a few more throws, splinters into little pieces. I find another stick in the yard, and she promptly chews that one to pieces too.
3 comments:
Maybe we need to summarize. So far you have told us how the iconic nature of language had led you to an inchoate understanding of grammar and syntax – at least to the recognition of the basic sentence structure of subject-verb-object, with the hint that words around these basic parts of speech were descriptors of some sort. This understanding allowed you to determine the meaning of many words you might not have understood otherwise – articles, a number of verbs, personal pronouns -- although in every instance you remained heavily reliant upon pictures that accompanied the text to assist you in those determinations. At a certain point, however, in one of the books you were studying, you encountered at the very beginning a sentence that deviates from the sentence pattern of subject-verb-object, a passive sentence, employing an expletive, with a postponed subject. This sentence presented you with certain words, “time,” “there,” and “was,” whose meanings you could not determine from the context. It seems to me, then, at a certain point you must have reached an impasse – or that you had to consult a dictionary, an act that seems fraught with much difficulty? Still haven’t gotten around to looking for those books.
An excellent summary, although – damn it, this chair’s not in the right place today. You must have forgotten to push the legs up to the edge of the rug. I’d continue but it’s really an effort for me to work the keyboard. You mind? I’ll respond to your question tomorrow. By the way, the title of your entry today – have you presented sufficient evidence to support what it asserts? M.
Note re: flora identification: Thus far in this journal, I have been calling a shrub that’s very prevalent in our fields a red willow. This identification is based on my recollection of what I believe Moi has been calling it since we moved to this place in 1987. Later in this journal, in late summer or fall, when the shrub starts bearing a purplish, blackish berry, as the reader will discover I call this name into question, and based on my researches online and in my Audubon field guide, I start calling it a chokeberry. However, to my consternation I continuously place the name in quotation marks because of my uncertainty about the identification, an uncertainty that derives from my inability at that time to gather enough evidence on all aspects of the shrub, specifically, the type of flower that it bears. Right now, as it so happens, the shrub is in flower, and the opportunity has arisen for me to inspect that specific evidence. Unfortunately, the flower the shrub now sports doesn’t look at all like the chokeberry flower that Audubon depicts and describes. To further complicate matters, tonight Moi has accompanied Mway and me on our walk, and, after I tell her about my difficulty in identifying the shrub, she suggests, after over 24 years of our living in this place, that the shrub might be called after all an alderbush, a name that’s immediately problematic in that Mr. Bill Gates and his whole Microsoft Word staff via their meddling software have just now underlined the word with a squiggly red underline flagging “alderbush” as a possible misspelling. I have already checked Audubon and have found no alderbush there. I’m too tired, drunk, and hungry right now to go online and research any further. Maybe tomorrow.
Post a Comment