October 15, 2010. Friday.
Situation: Last night Moi, after coming home from her work, asked if I knew where Woody was. Of course, I told her I had no idea. She looked under and behind chairs, sofas, cupboards, the refrigerator, but could not find him. Finally she looked behind the one thing she hadn’t looked behind, the piano, and that’s where he was hiding. “I wonder how he could stand it behind there,” Moi said to me, “Maybe he’s deaf.” Today Moi tells me Woody ventured out from his hiding place when Mway was in the room. “Mway just stood there, with her ears drawn back. She remembers that Squeak cuffed her when they first met.” Today I work a little bit in the early afternoon, and when I get home, Moi and Mway are getting ready to take a nap. I lie down too, and about an hour later, around 4, Moi and Mway stir. Mway is now lying in front of the back door, waiting for me to put on my walking clothes, which I’ll have to look for – last night I laid them out on a chair in front of the wood pellet stove, and Moi has moved them somewhere.
State of the Path: Mway circles around the chickens once before following me to the path. Looks like there’s no more flowers on the Jerusalem artichokes. Rain clouds have formed in the sky, and the sun, low on the horizon, lies obscured behind them. A breeze whooshes through my helmet, sounding like radio noises. The wind nearly blows the helmet off, but then it dies down. Only a scattering of leaves remain on the black walnuts in the old orchard. In addition to the Boy’s fort, and the virtual monkey vine fort in the tree next to it, I can clearly see our second piece of antique farm equipment at the border of our property. The thinner of the two vines that formed the monkey vine portal has snapped in two, but a kind of portal remains, since the main vine runs from one hawthorn tree on one side of the path to another on the other side. Down at bug land, I at first think the last ironweed flower has finally disappeared, but then I spot it, shriveling but still purple, next to its brown and shriveled companions. I still see a few lady’s thumb on the path along the creek, but they’re disappearing. The asters at the swale are scraggly, but a few flowers still remain on the plants. I approach the plank. It wobbles once, and I look down at what I’m sure is a crack down the middle of it, though I don’t know how serious a crack it is. I test the plank with my feet – it seems like it’ll support me – then I quickly sidle across it. I make the whole circuit of the path on the skating pond crest. The far feed channel (or more properly, what my father must have intended to be an outlet channel) has a little water trickling down it towards the creek, which must mean there’s some amount of moisture that has collected in the skating pond. On the far ridge, below the sumac that has fallen over onto the path, there’s an animal skull – bigger than a rabbit’s or squirrel’s, about the size I imagine that a racoon’s skull would be.
State of the Creek: Mway doesn’t go into the water; maybe it’s turning too cold this late in the day. Newly fallen leaves – most noticeably oak leaves – lie on top of the still water of the pools and collect in front of the rock cascades and the trunks of trees on the creek bank.
The Fetch: I stand in the wedge of the nearly-trampled down goldenrod. I toss the stick toward the sumacs, and Mways heads down the path in the wrong direction, but she quickly corrects herself and manages to find the stick, pinpointing where it landed I believe entirely by sound. On the first few tosses, Mway doesn’t bring the stick all the way back to my feet, and I have to point to the ground and tell her “bring it here,” but eventually she starts bringing it all the way back. I note that the goldenrod in front of the sumacs, which I thought was all brown yesterday, still has its fuzzy white flowers. I toss the stick back and forth down the path and toward the sumacs, and where I stand near the “chokeberry” bush, I lose sight of Mway when she heads down the path. I see the weeds where the stick lands wiggle, and then I hear Mway huffing while she’s running up the path before she comes into sight at the clearing.
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Here are some of my thoughts about my novel. You talked about motivation -- actually I’m probably motivated by the desire to get outside of my life as much as I can. Although in searching about for a topic to write about, I’ve had to consider the possibility that what I could write best about was my own life. What do I know about life except taking a walk and fetching a stick? This, at first glance, seemed to me the most natural thing for me to base a novel upon, basically the same thing you’ve been writing about -- only I thought I could do it a lot better, never mind what I once called you. So I tested my skills. And when I sat down and faced my memories of all the walks I’ve taken and all the sticks I’ve fetched, not only was I full of anxiety about it, I discovered I was too close to it. What I thought was knowledge turned out to be confusion, that is, infinite inconclusiveness. Not only were there so many dashings after the stick and so many brushings against goldenrod to describe, and hundreds of smells and visions prior to that, there was no end to what I might say in order to be faithful to, to do justice to, my experiences as they unfolded. The intimacy that I thought would result in clarity resulted in muddle instead – and my psychological attitudes, which are part of these experiences -- I wanted nothing more than to leave them where I left them so many weeks ago. I’ve realized that, to achieve any kind of lucidity in my writing, I’ll have to write about something I know nothing about. After all, how long was Jack London in the Yukon? Only six months. Melville spent only a year or so in the Pacific. To write about America John Steinbeck took only a couple months to cross the country. Joyce – if he had stayed in Dublin would he have been able to write about it? I don’t think so – he needed some distance from it so its ever unfolding would not forever overflow into his pen. So I’ve hit upon Australia – at least as a setting – as something that I’m apparently biologically connected to but sufficiently ignorant about as to be capable of writing about it vividly. MM.
I appreciate the desire to write about something you know nothing about. “Plonger au fond du gouffre, Enfer ou Ciel, qu’importe? Au fond de l’Inconnu pour trouver du nouveau!” Incidentally, I went to a protest rally today, an offshoot of Occupy Wall Street held in a local town, called Occupy L_______. There were many people there I knew – some of whom come regularly to my gigs. The organizers allowed anyone who had something to say to speak through a microphone to the crowd. Wade’s wife, Susan, who is the pastor of a local Unitarian Church, spoke, as did Tanya Wells. Tanya mentioned that she holds three advanced degrees and yet is unemployed, then she sang “Wade in the Water,” accompanied by Wade on a drum. A lot of people were holding signs: “We Are The 99%,” “Tax The 1%,” “I’m So Angry I’m Holding This Sign,” “I’ll Believe Corporations Are People When Texas Executes One.” There were all ages of people, old protesters from the ‘60’s, college students, children. (Moi didn’t come because she’s down at Jazz’s watching Atlas for the weekend.) One young man spoke on behalf of his family, all of whom work at convenience stores and find it hard to make ends meet. I didn’t see anyone with a pet, though I suppose one would have been welcomed if kept on a leash. I didn’t think about bringing you there – I think it’s best you remain focused on your novel.
I think so too. I respond well in a crowd of chickens -- but a crowd of people, with their tall legs milling around? Not for me. MM.
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