Almost a month early we’re springing the clocks forward. So my body says 2 but my eyes say 3. We’re into Day 2 now and I can hardly believe how incredible this girl is. She slept in the car on the way home, came out tail wagging, peed in her yard, ate her supper, looked around. Slept all night without a peep…but an occasional moan and rattle of the crate as she re arranged herself.
So this is the collie. She pads around the house like a lion, and at times I feel like I’m deep in the ocean and she is a whale floating by. She is all restrained power and steady calm. She follows me around the house, but without the edge of fear. Maybe she is a little unsure, and knows me best. The largest and the smallest dogs are like my moons.
Flynn has her well in hand, Gus is slightly outraged and Sonny is overwhelmed by her bulk…but she has been very good about backing off. and about going outside and eating and chewing her chews…she even puts herself in her crate to rest. When she;s not sprawled out in the middle of the floor, an enormous beast, a fourth lion, a fourth wolf, a fourth gentle, otherworldy whale.
She trusts the world. She trusts people. She is confident and strong.
We are calling her Maudie-- My Audie-- to temper the “mighty in battle*” to mean “noble strength**” *Matilda of which Maude is a diminutive ** Audrey “noble strength”
Lindsay is too much like Flynnie and Lizzy, and I hope Leslie and Eva will like Maudie.
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Home
March 9, 2007 11:20pm
I am bone tired and damp. Sonny is curled up on his blue bed near my feet and Lindsay is on the rug by the laundry door. I can hear her breathe. I look over and sure enough shake my head. A collie. A mahogany sable collie. My collie.
The story of the day.
It rained. I decided to take Sonny for the company and so at least one of the papillons would travel home with her. It was a drive I have thought of making many times over the last 6 years. Just me on an afternoon in the middle of the week.
The parts of the drive become familiar and are separating out now: the change on the I-5 after you go through Wilsonville and enter the valley and the landscape gets very horizontal and green . The trip through Salem and over the bridge, after which you are in rural Oregon, a little growth along the edges. 22 to 99Wsouth and then right where the ground swells up and sighs in great swaths of color, the fields inked over with rain or turned so green they are blinding; the ochre dirt the color of cooked pumpkin flesh and the coast range charting the horizon in blue shadows and cloud smears. The road becomes organic and it dips and curves like the hills themselves. It is breathtaking the way the green hill meets the full black clouds of rain coming, and yet somehow so anonymous…beauty without feeling; or maybe it is beauty without memory. No music from a tinkly amusement park rolling up and over the hills to meet. Although now maybe there is…
Then a left that takes you into the trees that fringe the foothills and then the sign that signals the return of ancient feeling KINGS VALLEY COLLIES. Like a mirage or a pot of gold or a gate to paradise. Up the hill then, narrow and black under the trees dipping and leaping higher into the hills. To the gate.
You stop the car, engine running and brake pulled and swing it open creaking and hollow and metal. Roll through. Close it. Roll down the hill to the chorus of collies.
But I get ahead of myself. Back in the middle lane of the I-5 I am breathing long draughts of breath and stretching the parts that will stretch looking for a calm place, if not the joyous place; keeping the car going straight. To think of even the smallest changes in schedule flip the panic switch…How will we eat supper?
Bt when I focus on her, the dog herself, I find myself grinning a tiny grin so small I have to look into the mirror to see if its really there. And it is, on the left side, a minute curve like a tiny seed in your mouth that feels 10 times bigger than it looks.
The pressure to feel a certain way, only now, at this moment, is absurd. Whatever it is I felt I will remember in the details of what I saw. And a buzzing on my neck, the empty fields. Friday traffic.
I am starting to fade…my eyes won’t stay open…more tomorrow…Now its time to get the girl in her crate and me into bed….
I am bone tired and damp. Sonny is curled up on his blue bed near my feet and Lindsay is on the rug by the laundry door. I can hear her breathe. I look over and sure enough shake my head. A collie. A mahogany sable collie. My collie.
The story of the day.
It rained. I decided to take Sonny for the company and so at least one of the papillons would travel home with her. It was a drive I have thought of making many times over the last 6 years. Just me on an afternoon in the middle of the week.
The parts of the drive become familiar and are separating out now: the change on the I-5 after you go through Wilsonville and enter the valley and the landscape gets very horizontal and green . The trip through Salem and over the bridge, after which you are in rural Oregon, a little growth along the edges. 22 to 99Wsouth and then right where the ground swells up and sighs in great swaths of color, the fields inked over with rain or turned so green they are blinding; the ochre dirt the color of cooked pumpkin flesh and the coast range charting the horizon in blue shadows and cloud smears. The road becomes organic and it dips and curves like the hills themselves. It is breathtaking the way the green hill meets the full black clouds of rain coming, and yet somehow so anonymous…beauty without feeling; or maybe it is beauty without memory. No music from a tinkly amusement park rolling up and over the hills to meet. Although now maybe there is…
Then a left that takes you into the trees that fringe the foothills and then the sign that signals the return of ancient feeling KINGS VALLEY COLLIES. Like a mirage or a pot of gold or a gate to paradise. Up the hill then, narrow and black under the trees dipping and leaping higher into the hills. To the gate.
You stop the car, engine running and brake pulled and swing it open creaking and hollow and metal. Roll through. Close it. Roll down the hill to the chorus of collies.
But I get ahead of myself. Back in the middle lane of the I-5 I am breathing long draughts of breath and stretching the parts that will stretch looking for a calm place, if not the joyous place; keeping the car going straight. To think of even the smallest changes in schedule flip the panic switch…How will we eat supper?
Bt when I focus on her, the dog herself, I find myself grinning a tiny grin so small I have to look into the mirror to see if its really there. And it is, on the left side, a minute curve like a tiny seed in your mouth that feels 10 times bigger than it looks.
The pressure to feel a certain way, only now, at this moment, is absurd. Whatever it is I felt I will remember in the details of what I saw. And a buzzing on my neck, the empty fields. Friday traffic.
I am starting to fade…my eyes won’t stay open…more tomorrow…Now its time to get the girl in her crate and me into bed….
thursday march 8 late
a significant moment in a significant day. the beginning of the day I go down to get Lindsay…who I more and more want to call Ailie... it’s just the name that sticks. IN any case…
I showed the first half of The Thin Red Line today. It was cloudy. I had to park far away and I was late. I had no coffee and no water, but I got ice water. I couldn’t get the sound to turn on until a student figured out it was on the DVD not the player.
Stopped at Western Pet to buy the kibble and another bag of better kibble. The guy was great. He gave me samples of the chicken/salmon raw for Lindsay. I got home as M was leaving to an apt—his 2nd of the day and I arranged to run over to MH so Laird could look at Flynn’s eye, which is finely healing.
I got an email about a KVC who is seriously ill with autoimmune problems…allergies. It freaked me out…Her other KV dog is fine. Somehow I plodded like a little rowboat over it…riding it all evening and then letting it go. I want to have the glory of this piece of time…these hours where the dream surfaces like the answer in an eight ball. It says Most Definitely.
Moments of space panic and sadness over the papillons losing a little piece of my time/attention. Although that does not have to be….We can all go places. more places together…Lindsey will be our vampire slayer…our own personal Buffy.
I have things to clean up , move around, stuff in bags for my trip tomorrow. M said simply…focus on the dream coming true…its just a little chaos at the edge…
I showed the first half of The Thin Red Line today. It was cloudy. I had to park far away and I was late. I had no coffee and no water, but I got ice water. I couldn’t get the sound to turn on until a student figured out it was on the DVD not the player.
Stopped at Western Pet to buy the kibble and another bag of better kibble. The guy was great. He gave me samples of the chicken/salmon raw for Lindsay. I got home as M was leaving to an apt—his 2nd of the day and I arranged to run over to MH so Laird could look at Flynn’s eye, which is finely healing.
I got an email about a KVC who is seriously ill with autoimmune problems…allergies. It freaked me out…Her other KV dog is fine. Somehow I plodded like a little rowboat over it…riding it all evening and then letting it go. I want to have the glory of this piece of time…these hours where the dream surfaces like the answer in an eight ball. It says Most Definitely.
Moments of space panic and sadness over the papillons losing a little piece of my time/attention. Although that does not have to be….We can all go places. more places together…Lindsey will be our vampire slayer…our own personal Buffy.
I have things to clean up , move around, stuff in bags for my trip tomorrow. M said simply…focus on the dream coming true…its just a little chaos at the edge…
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
A Small Setback
We were much relieved when Gus’ dental went without a hitch, an extraction and was home before noon. And no crystals! But Flynnie’s dental resulted in 3 pulled incisors and the little growth on her eyelid turned out to be the tip of an iceberg, so she is in recovery with an e-collar and I had to postpones my trip to pick Lindsay up tomorrow.
In a way it’s a small relief, it gives me more time to get ready. In another way it’s a disappointment. I can’t wait to have her here to look at and touch.
The full force of this breed love has hit the shore and I really don’t understand how I withheld for so long…withstood. Denied? Not that the other breeds don’t interest me. They do. I’m wildly interested in them in fact. But I don’t love another breed the way I do collies. The tribe of collie. The gestalt of collie. The outline. And what other breed could possibly serve with me so well as a collie? What body could walk into a room bringing the same joy and beauty and gravitas?
The papillons I love as individuals more than as members of a breed. But then they don’t come packing a deep historic connection.
After seven days Flynn should be back to herself, if still banging around in that collar. And used to it as well. I’m not quite sure what to make of the fact that that eye is the planet on which Flynn and I met. The day I first saw her her eye was giving her trouble and that night I was woken by what felt like an ember in my eye. And now…the day before I was to go get the next girl, she has surgery on that very eye. The tumor was far deeper that we thought. Is there a connection between the physical aspect of the story, i.e. whatever was bothering that eye developed into a growth? Is there a metaphorical connection?
Yes. I worry that they will feel displaced, even though they will not be. I am committed to everyone keeping their place, and even solidifying everyone’s “job.” She is an addition, not a replacement. All 3 will come with me to EW’s. Flynn will still be my Sharon dog, my Boston dog, my girlfriend. And Sonny’s place in my heart gets fatter by the day…
Maybe it will stop raining by next Friday…maybe the sun will shine on the long stretches of road to KV.
In a way it’s a small relief, it gives me more time to get ready. In another way it’s a disappointment. I can’t wait to have her here to look at and touch.
The full force of this breed love has hit the shore and I really don’t understand how I withheld for so long…withstood. Denied? Not that the other breeds don’t interest me. They do. I’m wildly interested in them in fact. But I don’t love another breed the way I do collies. The tribe of collie. The gestalt of collie. The outline. And what other breed could possibly serve with me so well as a collie? What body could walk into a room bringing the same joy and beauty and gravitas?
The papillons I love as individuals more than as members of a breed. But then they don’t come packing a deep historic connection.
After seven days Flynn should be back to herself, if still banging around in that collar. And used to it as well. I’m not quite sure what to make of the fact that that eye is the planet on which Flynn and I met. The day I first saw her her eye was giving her trouble and that night I was woken by what felt like an ember in my eye. And now…the day before I was to go get the next girl, she has surgery on that very eye. The tumor was far deeper that we thought. Is there a connection between the physical aspect of the story, i.e. whatever was bothering that eye developed into a growth? Is there a metaphorical connection?
Yes. I worry that they will feel displaced, even though they will not be. I am committed to everyone keeping their place, and even solidifying everyone’s “job.” She is an addition, not a replacement. All 3 will come with me to EW’s. Flynn will still be my Sharon dog, my Boston dog, my girlfriend. And Sonny’s place in my heart gets fatter by the day…
Maybe it will stop raining by next Friday…maybe the sun will shine on the long stretches of road to KV.
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