Feel Dizzy in the Windblown Goldenrod

September 8, 2010.  Wednesday.

Situation:  As it turned out, Moi never had me hold the ladder for her: “I’m too tired to paint now,” she said, “I can paint better in the morning.  There’s no rush to get to it tonight.  The windows aren’t going anywhere.”  I work tonight and have to leave about 3:30.  This morning Moi and I meet with a lawyer about some financial concerns; after lunch (Moi has cereal I believe, and I make my typical brunch of Ramen noodles, with a stir fry of a scallion, turnip greens and Swiss chard, tomatoes – all from the garden – with garlic wings leftover from my Sunday work), everyone takes a hour nap.  I read a bit from “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For.”  It’s now 2:12, and I just have time to squeeze in a walk with Mway.

State of the Path:   At first I can’t find the birch branch.  The other sticks on the bench are too small for my liking, so I ask Moi if she’s seen the bigger stick.  She tells me to look in the music room, but all I find there is a small stick like the ones on the bench.  I pick it up to take it outside, and Moi now tells me she found the birch branch under the bushes beside the porch.  Before I can grab it, Mway, who’s already outside, snaps it up and starts running off with it.  I tell her to drop it, because I want to use it also as my walking stick.  Like the good dog she is, she eventually does drop it, and we head down the path.  I forget to take a whiz in the walled garden, but then I’m reminded of what I need to do when Mway takes a pee at the juncture of the main path and the path that leads to the clearing.  After my pee, we continue down the main path.  It’s a windy day.  I look at Moi’s pink wildflowers and regret that I didn’t bring my Audubon along with me – I remark that it does look awfully like smartweed, but I’m sure it isn’t.  There doesn’t seem to be as many insects out today; could it be because of the wind?  At the swale to bug land I see one of the lavender asters growing there, and at the feed channel, which I don’t cross, even more have come up there.  I finally spot again the white asters – and looking at them today, I start wondering if they could be simply fleabane.  As I head up to the clearing through the goldenrod, the wind picks up and the yellow spikes start to sway, and I begin to feel that same strange sensation I felt the other day (almost a feeling of disembodiment).  I pause, look down, take a deep breath.  The wind stops, and I start walking again toward the clearing, hoping to make it there without the wind again picking up.

State of the Creek:  At the tree stand, Mway descends into the dry creek bank.  When she comes back up to the path beyond the honeysuckle, a leafy vine is draped over her snout.  Among the rocks of the dry creek bed, there are a lot of crinkly brown leaves – leaves which must have already fallen this season.  Barely a puddle at the log jam, and barely two puddles at the narrows.

The Fetch:  I find my mind wandering, as Mway fetches the stick again and again.  Indeed I find it composing the very sentences I’m writing now, and catching myself at this, I tell myself to stop and pay attention to what’s around me.  A yellow butterfly flits over the goldenrod, fluttering in my direction.  The Queen Anne’s lace is curling up into itself.  After several fetches, Mway has soaked the birch branch with her saliva.  She snorts, perhaps from breathing in goldenrod pollen or swallowing some birch bark.  I can easily smell the astringency of the goldenrod today, or perhaps it’s an odor coming from the two small ragweed plants Mway and I are trampling to death at my feet.