DOLDRUMS

What a self-explanatory word is "doldrums"!  It sounds like what it is, the first syllable's long mournful O sliding into the backwater liquid of L.  And then those drums, the shudder vowel of the "uh", the lid shoved down on it by the M.  And for good measure the sibilant S closing out this enervating sound of a word.  This enervating time, this summer lethargy I've been in for weeks now.

Arjun, now deceased, in a doldrums mood.  

No blogging.  Just a few poems begun, which is better than none, of course.  Much better.  One of them, tentatively titled "The Vishnu Bird" opens with a little song of promise.

The Vishnu bird startles me

this morning.  Vishnu

vishnu, he calls from the  tree

the locals call sarvis

because it blooms Eastertime,

 calling the faithful to worship. 

Barefooted, I'm walking out to the garden

in nightgown and bathrobe,

my coffee cup half full,

my head brimming over with another night's

bird calls. 

How Vishnu, in his incarnation as bird, got into my back yard, who knows.  Maybe he'll bring along some different rhythms and images.

Not even the garden has energized me as much this summer, though, Vishnu notwithstanding,  when I walk out barefooted with coffee cup in hand.  Our lettuces have been battered by rain and hail, our mustard greens gone to seed too early.  No tomatoes at all.

Still, the edges of a few leaves are beginning to turn russet.  The wind teases the hair on my arms.  Something's coming, some change of cloud-drift, some shifting of the imagination's tectonic plates. Maybe.  And though there are no tomatoes,  there are cucumbers, and more cucumbers.  What does that word sound like, cucumber?

 I leave it to you to tell me.

WALKING THE DOG, by Charlotte Holmes

(Erland Drowses, photo by Charlotte Holmes)

This post is sent to me via her blog Nightbook (see sidebar) by Charlotte Holmes, a former WCU professor who has lived and taught in Pennsylvania for more years than I want to tally. Charlotte is a brilliant fiction writer (you can look her up!) and this short essay about taking her dog Erland for a walk is a mere taste of her talent. I've come to enjoy her blog very much; I think you will, too.

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"It is what it is," I tell the dog tethered to the other end of the black nylon leash wrapped three times around my hand. Erland wags his tail, but his attention is elsewhere. He stares into the middle distance of the neighbor's backyard, where a squirrel he doesn't see darts down the gravel driveway. He puts his nose to the ground and breathes in the smell of leaf mold and mud.

Erland receives much of the junk that floats around inside my head. Sometimes a word leaks out, inadvertently: expedient, photogravure, evolutionary. They are all the same to him--words that do not mean it's time to go out or time for dinner. His tail wags at the sound of my voice, and sometimes, he turns and focuses his large brown eyes on this person at the other end of the leash. I speak freely as we make our way down the back alley, something I would not have done even a few years ago. Now, if anyone sees or hears, I expect they think Bluetooth is my invisible companion. "Not that I care," I tell Erland, who hesitates over something oily mashed into the asphalt, then flicks his tail and trots on.

A narrow charcoal line behind my house, the alley connects to the cross streets drawn in bolder strokes north and south across the map of this small town. In the alley, potholes fill with rain, freeze to circles of ice in winter. Erland and I step lightly around them. He walks ahead, nose to the ground. When he stops to breathe in the scents lodged in the telephone pole, I tug him back on track. When he smells a neighbor approaching a row of plastic cans with a bag of trash, his hackles rise, he barks, and strains against the leash as if he would attack this man whose name I do not know, though I've lived on this street for sixteen years. The man says what nearly all men of a certain type say when barked at by my dog: "Yeah, yeah, I hear ya, buddy, you're a real tough customer, arentcha?"

Erland is small. Erland is a dachshund. Erland has a bark that sometimes startles me when it erupts out of his muscular throat and shatters the room's quiet. Erland stops for a moment, scrutinizing the man banging the lid back down on the trash can, then resumes barking with renewed force, with something like rage. He would bite the man if the man approached, but the man thinks Erland is both cute and ridiculous. "Yeah, yeah," he says again, in a mocking voice, as I pull Erland away.

We walk down behind the deaf woman's house, and past the backyard of the restaurant magnate, where the entire space is a paved terrace with statuary and a plashing fountain. "Nouveau," I tell Erland, but he is too busy to pay attention, sniffing carefully at the low stone wall that must serve as a kind of message board for those who know the world primarily through their sense of smell. He is too short to lift his leg, so he squats at the base of the wall, and takes a long, meditative piss. "Good boy," I say, and he stares up at me, tolerant of my condescending ways. "What she always says," he is possibly thinking.

"Silly, huh?" I ask, but there at the other end of the leash, he's distracted again, nose already lifted in the air in pursuit of a new scent. He paws the ground half-heartedly, then pulls me along with him, searching for its source.

NEVER GONNA GIT IT, NEVER GONNA GIT IT

Pardon my cribbing from hip-hop, but that's what I thought when I saw my big Bro under the tulip poplar barking at a squirrel. His pal, Ace of Dogs, also joined in, but I didn't catch him on my digital. He finally decided to heck with this, and walked back to the house.

Meanwhile, Lord Byron was recovering from having a nasty wart removed. Poor little shaved head. He looks awful, but of course, being Byron, he still considers himself Top of the Line.

In downloading these photos, I found several of Arjun lying by the clothesline. I had forgotten about them. These must have been taken three or four days before he died. It's still difficult to realize he isn't around anymore.

ARJUN: SAYING GOODBYE

(Last photograph of Arjun, taken the first morning I was back from Ga., after my flat tire experience! Having the dogs waiting for me helped calm me down.)


For nearly two years we have watched our daughter's beloved dog Arjun grow more decrepit, losing his hearing, his eyesight, his sense of who he was and where he was. What he was was a miracle. He had been one of the "Buchanan dogs," as they came to be known. I did not know this man's history, only that when he died suddenly of a heart attack 10 years ago, he left behind as many as 40 dogs in crates and cages. When his neighbors realized that they had not seen Mr. Buchanan around for a few days, they discovered him dead and called in the Health Department. Our good friend Mary Adams went over to check out the situation. She found many of these dogs unable to be saved. Only 4 or 5 were able to be put up for adoption. Our Arjun was one. She says that, remarkably, considering his living conditions for so many years, he put his nose through the cage and let her pet him. (The others were not socialized enough to make them adoptable.)

And so, three days after our daughter's cocker spaniel died suddenly one January night, we both went to ARF Adoption Day outside Ingle's in Sylva. (ARF is our local human society organization.) There sat a dog looking a lot like the gone spaniel, but larger, obviously with some Golden Retriever in him, as well. Same coloration. Large liquid eyes. Cory sat down and the dog climbed into her lap. He did not leave. We took him home with us, and here he has stayed ever since. Because he had survived so much in his first 8 years of living in a crate, receiving very little attention, probably not much food, Cory named him Arjun, her warrior-dog, after the hero of the Bhagavad Gita who meets God on the battlefield and sees the mystery of creation opened up to him. Arjun really was only warrior-like when our daughter seemed to be threatened or when our old dog Copper came at him. He was especially a warrior when he was on one side of the sliding glass door and Copper on the other. They waged fierce battles through that glass, teeth snarling, froth flying.

Now Arjun lies beside our garden. He breathed his last heroic breath Sunday afternoon. My good friends Herb Potts and Chris Wilcox came as soon as I called them and helped me through the last moments. Then they buried Arjun by our garden. I thank them a hundred times over. Our daughter was devoted to her dog. She called him "the love of her life." I would not presume to think that an exaggeration.


Here is a poem that my friend Susan Lefler wrote when their Gandolf died.

Gandolf

The old dog died—quiet.
Laid his gold head down
in my husband’s hands as if
to please us one last time,
which after all was his reason
for being: the cold nose
in the face each morning, his head
on my feet as I worked.

I listen for the click of his nails
as he crosses the house to see
where I am, how I am today.

A perfect V of wild geese flew above us
as we laid him in the ground,
they were calling
and calling

Susan Lefler



Our youngest dog, Ace, standing in the light of that same morning, when I was so happy to be back home.

Lord Byron beside the flowers

One of our five refugee dogs is a small black bundle of stubbornness that we found sitting on a chair under the ARF (Animal Relief Fund) tent several years ago on one of their adoption days. He had been rescued in the Caney Fork area, where someone found him wandering the road, obviously homeless. Speculation was that students had abandoned him after their time at WCU came to an end. He sat in his chair as if he owned it, the tent, and the Wal-Mart parking lot. I can't remember how much he weighed at the time, but it was a lot less than he weighs now! (I hear him barking at the door, demanding to come in.)
The ARF volunteers had nicknamed him Road Warrior, and we soon discovered why--he liked to wander whenever he felt like it. He also liked to veg out on the sofa, or the bed, whenever he felt like it. He especially liked to snuggle into any clothes left lying about on the sofa, easy chair, or bed, and sometimes he was indistinguishable from them. Once, my husband ordered his dark flannel shirt to get off his chair. Well, the room was dark, and our eyesight is not what it used to be.
"Byron, get down," my husband ordered. Byron meanwhile was in the kitchen hoping for a snack. The shirt did not move. But then, if it had been Byron, he would not have moved either.
Yes, our daughter named him Byron. It seemed perfect for him, capturing his essence, so to speak. He lives according to his own rules and lets us know it whenever we expect him to live by ours.
He's still barking at the door, wanting his morning snack. I better go let him in!