Déjà vu. For some reason these prompt words for the Sunday Whirl Wordle 589 led me into a restatement of a blog I wrote 14 hours ago in what felt like the late hours of yesterday but what were really the early hours of today. It was to me as though I’d only thought it before and not written it down. It was only after I’d written this and reread the earlier blog that I realized I’d told the same story twice in different words. These are the prompt words you’ll find repeated below in the story: lockdown watch danger hunt challenge glass flesh gathering disrupt murder craft cut
Life with Dogs
Well after lockdown, my sentinels are watchful for any signs of danger. Even after their eyes close and their flesh surrenders to sleep, their ears hunt for signs of murder, mayhem or possums. I am fully awake minutes after their last return from a wild charge out the space left by the sliding glass door which I have left open the width of the security bars so they can exit as needed, not to meet the challenge of intruders, but rather to execute those calls of nature which I am most sympathetic with, being of that age when at the least one or two calls of nature disrupt my sleep nightly.
Darkness gathers me into its arms as I close my eyes once more and finally find a position comfortable enough to remain in for the remainder of the night when once again, Zoe’s loud high sliding crescendo of a bark cuts through the darkness, her claws cutting into my stomach as she uses it for a launching pad off the bed and out the door. These are the movements of a gymnast performing her high leaps with seemingly no effort—more an art than a craft—and my ears strain to hear any noise of combat, any running feet or crashing through the bushes and over the wall. Instead I hear one high keening scream, quickly cut off. It is a sound I’ve never heard before and I imagine some small creature giving voice to its death protest or a possum giving a squeal of warning , but the dog is back again so quickly that I can’t imagine any combat has occurred.
Another past-midnight mystery of life with dogs. I roll over on my left side to reach over the side of the bed and lift Zoe up for the third time this evening, and when I do, Coco crawls into the warm spot I have left. Rolling back to the right again, I push hard against her to reclaim my space and Zoe moves into the space that I make on the left side as I do so, then walks with no guilt over my breast an stomach to settle herself into the cleft between my legs. I move them apart slightly to settle some of her weight onto the mattress and try to settle myself back to sleep.
Sleeping With Dogs
It is exactly 3 a.m., Sunday morning, January 22, 2023. Coco just leapt out of bed to deal with some intruder in the yard or on the terrace and came back to bed with hiccups. Zoe, who is too little to leap back up on the bed under her own power, is crying to be boosted up for the second time in 15 minutes, having barely settled herself before following along in her sister’s panic.
I, on the other hand, had just settled into a comfortable position on the small section of bed I’d claimed from the dogs and started the first few steps into my dreamworld when a possum or cat or skunk or mouse or squirrel or the ghost of some former possum or cat or skunk or mouse or squirrel had deigned to enter the dogs’ domain.
Now all is right in the world and the dogs have settled. I, on the other hand, have again entered the addictive realm of the internet and here I am again, doing that tapdance of fingers on the keys. As though I don’t have enough file cabinets, boxes and folders and blog entries full of words. What is going to happen to all these words when I die? And why is it even important to me what happens to them? In the world of words, they are also-rans. No one will hear in my words much that they have not heard before. But they are the story of my life, my world, and although it is inevitable that I will vanish, I don’t want them to. My art has gone out into the world and perhaps will continue to once I have left it in the hands of its inheritors, but my words will float back into that great lexicon of the universe to perhaps be given birth in the minds of some future soul who will sort them into a different order and make them their own.
3:14. Lights out, settled again…..and Zoe is off again, high-pitched barks LOUDLY punctuating the night air as she leaps from the bed in an arc, landing on the floor and out the gap between the security bars on the door to search out some other intruder. Once again, I leave my bed to cajole her to come back to bed. When she finally complies, I shut the glass slider so her next protestations will at least be muffled from the neighbors. She settles herself on my lap which means I am again the prisoner that I had been previous to rolling Coco off my lap and assuming a more comfortable position. I’ll awaken with a backache from being frozen into one position for the rest of the night, but finallly all seems to be settled. Sleeping with dogs––a bit like living with a newborn. Or two newborns. But the alternative is utter seclusion which can bring other night terrors and certainly different thoughts before finally, blessedly, falling to sleep.
Mentor
He’s an agent of enchantment, the guru of his flock—
a professor who can mesmerize with ordinary talk.
A master of expression, his descriptions weave their spells
that hold students in their thrall through the stories that he tells.
They copy down in notebooks each word that he has shared,
humbled by the wisdom of the heart that he has bared.
They will never know that their stunning visionary
is inspired by Wikipedia as well as Wiktionary.
Prompt words today are copy, description, enchantment, flock, professor and express.
At the Nueva Posada Writers’ Group Reading today: (Click photos to enlarge.)
When I left home this morning, brother and sister were curled up tight on their cushion on the the garage cabinet.
Do you Remember…..
Click on photos to enlarge.
Big Rock Candy Mountain
Have you heard the allegory of enchanted mountain
with its chocolate boulders and raspberry soda fountain?
Snow on the top is ice cream, but beware, for it’s precipitous
and only accessible to the most felicitous
children who the lessons of politeness have well-learned.
Children who are naughty and selfish will be spurned.
If you think this is impossible and just a silly story,
remember that I told you that it is an allegory.
The wisdom that it teaches is good manners are rewarded,
and though there is no list in life where they are all recorded,
still life tends to give back to us exactly what we give.
If you desire sweet things, that’s what you have to give.
Prompt words today are mountain, spontaneous,
allegory, felicitous, ice and enchanted,
Unlove Spell #2
I don’t swallow your poetry, it’s lacking rhyme and meter.
You fancy yourself as a bard, but you are just a cheater.
Your words are all disposable. I’ve heard them all before.
Your melody discordant as you walk out the door.
I have a little fetish that I stick needles in.
They say it’s made expressly for expunging faithless men.
Prompt words today are bard, disposable, fetish, cheater, swallow and melody. Joke folks. Not autobiographical. If you want to read the original Love Charm, go HERE.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 