August 8, 2010. Sunday.
Situation: This morning I search “bindweed” online, and at wikipedia I find a perfect photo of the white trumpet-shaped flower I’ve been seeing, and behind it I can just make out the arrow-shaped leaves. So, though it’s all in the morning glory family, bindweed it is. Work all day today, and when I get home, about 6:30, I say to Moi, “Well, I guess I’ll take the little dog for a walk,” half-hoping perhaps that she’ll tell me that she’s just done that herself. Instead she says, “Oh, she’ll be thrilled about that.”
State of the Path: The ground, as it has been for the last couple weeks, is hard and almost as white as it was at the beginning of July. At the juncture to the side path, I tell myself, “Whichever way Mway goes, I go.” Mway stays straight on the main path. Down at the start of bug land, I look at the big “chokeberry” bush, its berries now mostly dark green, blue, purple, black, gray, with whitish areas, somehow moonish when taken altogether. The bush is surrounded by jewelweed, still flowering somewhat but not popping seeds, and below it is an ironweed plant around which I see flittering and flower-sipping a tiger swallowtail (yellow swallowtail?). Down by the creek, I remark to myself how a stand of jewelweed survived the dry summer up by the “chokeberry” but how another disappeared totally around the plastic barrel, though there are many stands of jewelweed right along the creek. On the ridge around bug land, there’s another big “chokeberry” bush I never noticed before, its berries as black, purple, blue, or whatever as the one at the other end of bug land.
State of the Creek: Beneath the tree stand, what water is there, if there is water there, looks from the creek bank like a splotch of mud. The vinyl siding – should I now say it’s about 5 feet from the piddling puddle of water? At the edge of the puddle is a big flat rock, its top white dry.
The Fetch: I don’t see any flowers of bindweed at the clearing – are they like day lilies and chickory, in bloom only for a day? I don’t see Mway anywhere and have to call out to her. She soon comes running up the path. One fetch – and, no questions asked, back to the house. At the porch she drops the stick at the door. Instead of putting it on top of the bench, I toss it underneath it. Tomorrow Barb Dennehy will again be watching Mway, and I don’t want her to carelessly lose it. Moi and I are again making a trip, this time to meet part of her family up at Akwesasne, where they’re all heading to renew their Indian cards. We’ll be away for a couple days, so there will be no walk for Mway from me on Tuesday, and, if there is any on Monday or Wednesday, perhaps no time to write about it afterwards.
2 comments:
M, just checking in on you, haven’t heard from you in several days. I assume you’re a fast reader and must have finished both “The Myth of Sisyphus” and the Australian cattle dog book by now – just wondering if you have any comments to make about either book. I’ve realized over the last few days how valuable your comments have been over the last year, even when they’ve been critical, or should I say, especially when they’ve been critical – they’ve kept me focused, attentive to whatever I wrote last year, the walks we’ve made; otherwise, I’m afraid I end up straying, start saying too much – I mention Jazz losing her job and the Boy getting clobbered by a taxi door, and I get all anxious, the future creeps in – and really it’s only too human to want to worry, to want to relegate the future -- to keep that strictly to Facebook, or the phone lines, don’t you think? For otherwise what I have before me is something to wake up to everyday and reflect upon, something to look forward to and remember, maybe not really a novel as I’ve mentioned before, or a recording of a jazz tune, as I’ve implied, but moments of beauty -- one doesn’t have to imagine – Sisyphus is happy, especially as it’s his wife’s rock, the mother of his two children’s rock, that he shoulders up a hill every day. What was I thinking the other day calling my journal a novel? It’s snapshots, boring, but personal snapshots, collected – I don’t know – I can’t say anything more just now.
Maybe after a year I just wanted something I could show to someone – as if what I had accomplished wasn’t worth the effort in itself, a Christmas present to share with Moi – and leave it at that. I don’t blame you, M, for crying out, after my very first post, “show me how the dog’s [sic] move!” If I resisted your demand, it wasn’t because I wasn’t tempted, but it also wasn’t just because I was lazy either. I’ve been truly entranced watching the walks unfold day after day, the words washed out in the moment, withered by the heat and cold, lost in folds of green, gray, and brown. And this has been enough – it should remain enough. But I remain tempted, for who but the two of us are still entranced (if I may also apply that word to you)? The year is not over yet – if I have a novel from the little memories I’ve collected I could still revise the material. I could introduce dinosaurs and dragons down by the creek. Or I could have you mauled by a bear, a mountain lion, or Pennsylvania’s Sasquatch – that could get Moi reading this blog again, and so long as you recovered, even if only partially, from your wounds, keep her happy. I myself could stumble into the feed channel and wind up permanently in a wheelchair, forthwith turning my walks with you into a heroic trek over ruts and bumpy ground. All that would hurt less than what does happen because it wouldn’t be true. Anyway, M, I need you to make a comment again soon. Take back what you said before – berate me for my prose, anything – keep me on the page.
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