October 23, 2010. Saturday.
Situation: Moi says she doesn’t know where the crooked stick came from; she suspects that Mway may have dragged it out of the lilac bushes along the side of the house. Last night, after we had finished watching a movie (When Nietzsche Wept) and were just sitting in front of the TV, Moi told me she had played the hoot of an owl on one of the apps of her iPhone and it had scared Woody. Without even thinking about it, I start imitating an owl, and Woody, who was there with us on the sofa, freezes, stretches his body upright to stare at me, then bounds for cover under a chair. Moi and I both work together tonight. Moi tells me we had a frost last night, the first frost of the season. Sometime today I would like to run the lawnmower over the yard one last time for the year then store it away in the cellar for the winter. But wait, Moi now tells me, because I said last night that I thought of doing so today, that she expects me to go to the grocery store, and she reminds me that I should also go out and pick up some new boots. So my day is being shaped already, and we’ll see how it goes and what I can do, keeping in mind that sometime I have to fit in a walk with Mway. In the car, going from one box store to another (four altogether), listen to Basie, remastered so Freddie Green sounds clear as one foot in front of another. At the tractor and farm supply store, find economy boots, made in USA, $12.99. No size ten, though: elevens are too big. Try a nine, and they seem to fit just right (my shoe size I believe is actually 9 ½). “As long as they don’t pinch,” Moi tells me, when I tell her what I had to buy. She goes to an early job, and I take advantage of her absence for an hour, then put on my new boots, telling a disappointed Mway she has to stay inside for now. Run the mower till the gas runs out; task consists mainly of chewing up fallen leaves. Up above the barn wall, a fly-covered ground hog is taking its last breaths, so don’t bother with that section. Before the gas runs out, my feet are feeling sore, the boots seem to pinch. Gas runs out about 3 pm, leave pushing the mower into the basement for another day. When I get inside I call Mway to the door, take my new boots off and put my old ones on.
State of the Path: The sun is shining hard; my sore toes slip about comfortably in a space they’re more used to. I stick to the main path. See more yellow leaves on the ground below the maples. No birds today, sound of cicadas, jet plane overhead. Must be making a sound walking though the leaves, but don’t notice it much today; maybe my ears are numb from hearing the lawn mower for an hour. At the swale, I brush aside a dead stalk of the New York or New England asters. Along the ridge, I spot two wilted aster flowers, hanging on for at least this one more day. Don’t see the all-wing bugs.
State of the Creek: Stare at the swampy stretch of water, where the Medusa plants undulate. They seem mesmerizing, like they could hypnotize me to sleep, or even more, they seem like sleep itself, waves of blackness assuming the first shapes of a dream.
The Fetch: Don’t feel like tossing the stick today, not even the fun long crooked one. On one toss, Mway struggles trying to extract the stick from the weeds; I see at least one briar among the goldenrod, as she starts snorting, coughing, even choking for a few seconds. I twirl the stick a few times; Mway almost lunges at my face. After a couple more tosses, I’m willing to play “Put it down,” but Mway keeps the stick between her teeth, and she starts running for the path as soon as I say “Okay. Good enough.”
2 comments:
Just want to let you know that I think we finally got the computer fixed. I needed a new wireless adapter. So I’ll be able to leave the computer on again when I leave the house, and you’ll have access to it. Last night I went down to see Jazz for a pre-birthday celebration (Matt’s father’s girlfriend made cake and lasagna – Jazz’s actual birthday is on Halloween). Jazz hasn’t found a new job yet, but she’s brimming full of creativity. She’s been writing songs and recording mp.3’s, and she wants to buy a drum set and learn to play it so she can add a decent percussion track to her recordings. We also looked at her photography, and she showed me her new photography studio. We even had a discussion on the difference between art and pornography (I wasn’t able to define the difference, but Jazz felt it had something to do with camera angles and the expressions on a model’s face). Moi wasn’t able to come down for the celebration because she had a gig to play on a hayride, which she later described to me as “not quite the gig from hell, but nearly so.” A Christian rock band played incessantly from a garage, and she was expected to play along to the amplified guitars. The tractor that pulled the haywagon made lots of noise on the hayride itself. The haywagon had a route that took it perilously close to a low electric line. A little boy sitting quietly in the wagon finally spoke up and asked Moi if she knew “that song they played when the Titanic was going down.” Anyway -- computer shouldn’t be a problem anymore.
That’s certainly good to learn that you’ve finally fixed your computer. But yesterday, when you were both out, I spent a lot of time trying to manipulate a pencil, and I think I’m getting the hang of it. And I’m discovering that I prefer writing with it to poking at a keyboard. The pencil has a certain weight to it -- I like the feel of it between my teeth -- and when I form a word with it, ever so slowly upon a piece of paper, I find that the weight of the pencil carries over to the word itself. The word itself seems to carry so much weight – after such an effort at inscribing a word, I feel more committed to it, so unlike jabbing at a keyboard. So I think I will write out this novel on pencil and paper, and what I require now is an ample supply of paper and perhaps a second pencil should the one I’m using break. If you could see to this, your cooperation would be much appreciated. MM.
Post a Comment