August 2, 2010. Monday.
Situation: I have work to do today sometime, and I’ll probably wait until this afternoon to take Mway for her walk. This morning Moi tells me that she let Squeak outside for five minutes, that she bounded after a bird, and that she managed to return inside when Moi let Mway back inside. Squeak for a long time has been afraid to go outside. She has been watching birds attracted by the trumpet vine on our front porch through the front screen door, but if we open up the door Squeak generally leaps back in fear. A couple weeks ago Squeak did sneak outside twice: one time she was immediately surrounded by threatening chickens and Moi had to rescue her, the second time was at night and she ended up trembling all night under the back porch. Going outside and coming back inside this morning maybe represents a breakthrough for Squeak; maybe she’s beginning to understand how doors work, something of course that Mway understands very well. Last night after our walk, at some point Mway slammed the bedroom door shut while I was walking past it in the hall (this is part of that stupid game that the Boy and I inadvertently taught her where after she slams the door shut then we’re supposed to leer at her through the transom window while she leaps up in anger at our leering faces -- one time while playing this game she accidentally bit the Boy in the nose). We’ve never been able to communicate to her not to do this any more, and this action reveals to me what I do mean when I make a statement such as “who knows what goes on in that dog’s mind?” I come back from work about 3. I expect Moi and Mway to be taking a nap, but Moi is out painting the back porch, and Mway is running around the yard. I decide to take Mway for her afternoon walk. Fortunately, Moi is aware of my fondness for the “pro-quality” stick, and although she’s cleared if off the porch, I find it easily where she pitched it on the ground.
State of the Path: I would bring the clippers with me today, but I hope to mow the lawn right after I take this walk (there’s a threat of rain), and I’m in a hurry. The walk is made a little difficult today because I’ve developed a big pimple on the back of my thigh, caused maybe by wearing my dirty walking clothes (how often should I wash them?) but I think more likely caused by a pair of cut-off jeans I’ve been wearing around the house that are slightly too big for me and ride down my leg. (I had Moi check the pimple to make sure it wasn’t a tick bite.) Just down to the creek and back. Watch out for bull thistles spared from my clippers. Past the wigwams, where the bracken died and turned brown earlier this summer, there’s a new growth of bracken coming up. Along the creek, there’s a thread-like growth over the jewelweed, and I wonder if it’s part of the seed system (Audubon mentions nothing about it). More flowers are coming out on the ironweed, but still only the one plant along the path above the ridge is beginning to look truly like the photo in Audubon.
State of the Creek: No change from yesterday evening. The water in the pool along the narrows has receded to about a foot away from the vinyl siding.
The Fetch: Mway fetches the stick once, then gives me the same eye she did last night. I wave my hand with a gesture of dismissal and tell her, “Go. Get back to the house.”
2 comments:
You know, I’ll look for that book on Australian cattle dogs and if I find it I’ll set it out for you to look at along with “The Myth of Sisyphus.”
That would be nice. I’m very curious about this cattle business. You know, I’ve also been thinking about what you call this issue between us, about it never being resolved. I’ve looked over my essay and your response to it, and maybe it is true – that your blog here, despite all appearances, has been heavily influenced by James Joyce, as reconstituted as you say by Samuel Beckett and whatever other books you have on your shelf (dashing over there to look at some of the titles at random, I see the Norton Anthology of African-American Literature, Eddie Condon’s Treasury of Jazz, How To Be a Working Actor by Henry & Rogers, Don Delillo’s Libra, and the New York Times Cook Book). In fact, I’m prepared to say – and I don’t say this lightly – that you are, in your own way, the next James Joyce, and accordingly I won’t bug you about trying to write like him anymore. About this door and transom thing your bring up today – I can’t tell you why I keep doing it and it’ll probably take something more than you just telling me you don’t like it for me to stop. M.
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