BARBIE MEDUSA

gray day

 

More rain, more overcast sky, more fog, more mud. Dense fog on the mountain today. Low-flying clouds cross the mountains along this stretch, crawling over them south to north like big white snails. The first five miles were opaque in dense fog and I took a detour over a muddy road that was a beautiful drive. Trees in fog are misty like a fairy tale. I drove out of the fog and it was another t-shirt day in late December. Wanted to see Carolina beat Atlanta in football, but that's not what I saw. At the beginning, Justin said Carolina would lose because they've lost their magic. I told him I'd said to friend Carole on the phone earlier that I want them to win too much, afraid I'd jinx them pulling for them. Not many years ago I went to a nascar race in Charlotte with Justin. He'd got a couple of free tickets. First car I pulled for was the M&Ms car because I like M&Ms. He was the first to blow his motor. Next I pulled for Jr Earnhardt. He blew his motor. I quit pulling for anybody. Nobody else blew an engine. When I'm watching a race on tv and feel like pulling for Joey Logano, I back away, not wanting to jinx him. I watch games and races with dispassion to keep from jinxing anybody. I know it is absurd to think I have such power, but too often it looks that way. I pull for Danica Patrick and she wrecks.

exit

I, too, suspected Panthers could lose, for the reason Justin said, they've lost their magic. Last week they came too close to losing. And I knew Atlanta would come back full force after their humiliating loss to Carolina the last game they played. The tension of Panthers going for their fifteenth straight win and Atlanta determined with all their power not to let it happen, made a good game. It was a tight game. Both teams struggled for every inch of ground. Atlanta won the play of the game with a stupendous Hail Mary pass and an equally stupendous catch. The quarterback had been hit hard three times before the play. The moment the ball left his hand he collapsed in agony. It took everything he had to throw it so far, so accurately. The receiver had three guys on top of him. The ball went between the hands of one of his blockers and into his hands. Beautiful throw, beautiful catch. I appreciate a good play, whichever team does it, and exclaimed, Great play! Justin said, Harrumph.

coyote with apple in its mouth

 

It was more fun seeing Vada than the tv. Upon arrival, as soon as we'd done our greeting hug, she took my hand and told me to go with her to her room. She wanted to show me her new toys. I knew her grandmother had given her a Barbie house and was curious to see what it could be. My first thought, it would have to be big. And it was. Three floors. About four feet high. Pink Beverly Hills post-modern neoclassical kitsch architecture. Something you'd think Paris Hilton might live in. I noticed there were no stairs. Of course, I thought, Barbie is about playing pretend. I asked Vada, Does it have an elevator? She said, Yeah! I'll show you how it works! It is a simple mechanism looking like it will go on working beyond the first two weeks. It has a garage with a mini Mustang in it and a swimming pool. A mermaid lay on her side in the pool having an underwater nap. She has half a dozen Barbies and several decapitated Barbie heads she plays with as much as the whole Barbies.

speeding car

 

One of the Barbie heads had long black hair. The new puppy dog, an "English cream lab," found it in a puddle of water in one of Vada's toys on the deck, floating face up. Dog picked up the head, brought it toward me, got in trouble and had to drop it. The wet plastic hair looked like the Medusa's head with blacksnakes writhing from her scalp. It was very peculiar to look at. Barbie Medusa with painted-on eyebrows and eyes, ruby lips. For a moment I thought I was watching a Derek Jarman film. Throughout my time there, the puppy curled up at my feet. I realized it had felt my gentle touch when we met and was drawn to it. I said it smelled dog on my shoes and pants, which it surely did. There came a time daddy scolded the dog for not curling up at his feet. The little dog is already afraid of him. He thinks he's training it, but for now he's only keeping it scared of him. It will grow up with his martial teaching and become a martial dog, which is what he wants it to be. We have different ideas of a dog's value. He will make a companion of the dog, Gus, to go places with him in the truck, be obedient and fierce, a protector for Vada to grow up with. It is a charming puppy and will make a great dog. In her room I called her Vada Tomata. She said, Don't call me that. I'm not food.   
  

prays for dogs

 

 

 

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SOFIA THE CAT DISCOVERS TREES

 

sofia tree cat

 

Earlier in the day I saw Sofia dart by the window, tail straight up, Corena behind her. Cat ran up a tree where dogs can't go. Sometimes I see her stand on the ground below a tree and look up it, assessing the branches and, I suppose, seeing herself climb it, like a Himalayan climber reading the side of an ice mountain, climbing it in his mind. Dog and cat were interacting outside. I took camera and watched them. I went out mainly because Martha was out there and I wanted to keep an eye on her. Cat was comical. Martha is here every morning waiting for dog to come out. She's enchanted by the new dog, a bit jealous too. Sofia would taunt Corena to play chase. Dog would dart at her, cat ran to nearest tree. She goes up a tree like a squirrel, high enough at first to be out of reach, stops and watches to see if she need go higher.  

 

sofia surveys the playground in the sky

 

On the ground she's somewhat anxious with two dogs. Her tail was fluffed and sometimes her body hair sticking straight out. She ran up in front of Corena, hunched her back, a ridge down her spine that stood up like a donkey mane, tail bristly like a bottle brush. She'd hop up and down on four feet in front of Corena, saying, Don't chase me...chase me...don't chase me...chase me. Dog looked at her like to say, What's up with you? She did it with Martha too. Cat did every kind of provoking Corena she dared with a dog. Eventually, Corena caught on the cat wanted to play chase. I took it she was apprehensive cat wanted to fight. In their world of international body language, fear and aggression read alike. Dog darted at Sofia and cat ran laughing up a tree. I was glad to see Corena take off after Sofia with a smile on her face as big as Sofia's. It was the first time I'd seen Corena catch hold of the spirit of play. It's subtle enough I might be imagining that I see a closer connection between cat and dog since I left them in the house together yesterday for five hours. The place was not torn up, nothing out of place, nothing broken. The day's learning for dog was waiting several hours in the house with cat while primate socializes among other primates. The two-leggeds are social animals.  

 

I'm scared of you, no I'm not, scared of you, not

 

Today, they are more relaxed with each other than before. Sofia likes Corena, wants to be close to her, wants to be her friend. When Corena relaxes into her new home, she will already have a best friend in a cat, something she'd never wanted for herself, a gift from out of the Blue, the best kind.  Sofia is now acquainted with the outdoors and knows the area around and under the house. I feel like her game with Corena is about racing dog to the nearest tree, learning how fast she needs to run to escape a dog. She goes inside and outside at will now. I feel she's safe, learning as fast as she learns. She's aware this is her territory. She knows the view out the windows, every detail. I saw her first time out there going from one rock to another, tree trunks, recognizing them up close, finding out what the objects were that she sees from the other side of the glass. The windows are her cat televisions she can go in and out of at will. She understands glass well by now. She also understands mirrors. At night when I have the floor lamp on, she can see herself in the window when the glass becomes mirrors. She humps her back. She jumps at it. She stalks it. She knows it is her own image, but plays pretend like a child that it's another cat, reacting as if it is.

 

our lady of the trees

 



She likes to see herself in a mirror, will sometimes sit beside the mirror like a parakeet, though not for long. She likes to see herself, but dwelling on herself does not interest the cat. I think of her image her imaginary friend. While I'm pecking at the keyboard, she will walk down from her window seat, step between my arms and stop. I scoop her into my arms, and she stretches front legs all the way out, back legs relaxed. She stays like that awhile, then turns around and looks at herself with the primate in the mirror for a minute or less, turns back around and settles into a relaxing session in the primate's arms, listening to him affirm her beauty, her charming personality, her clever pranks, telling her I appreciate how well she is doing with the dog, how fast she's learning, how happy I am to be able to trust her home alone not to tear up. I wondered how Sofia would change with a dog in the house. She has changed for the more familiar. She's more relaxed at home with the dog. She has somebody to pay attention to besides herself. She likes dog. Dog is slow to want to know her. Everything is new for Corena. I tell her, be kind with Sofia, the day is coming she will be your very best friend.   

 

sofia's deer skull with antlers tattoo

 

 

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CHRISTMAS AT HOME WITH FAMILY

black corena

 

The night before Christmas not much stirred through the house. Dog lay curled up in the reading chair, cat beneath the desk at my feet, and the primate played the keyboard like a percussion piano of clicks. Windchimes went ting-tong-ting outside, and inside my head the katydid chorus of a summer night. Dog's experiential learning for the day concerned rain, learning how to go from one napping place to another. She'd go to the door, I'd open the door, she'd look at the rain awhile and back up. It gets tight in here when we're all three in motion. Frequently our paths cross with dog at my knees and cat at my ankles. Two days of rain has both dog and cat frustrated they can't go outside. Both understand their boundaries outdoors by now. Sofia stays close to the house. Corena explores in sight of the house all the way around. Dog is learning the boundaries of her new territory. The time will come she will do her toilet in places that establish her boundaries to the night critters and dogs passing through. She will keep her markings fresh and quickly be known by all the four-leggeds in this part of the mountain, including the squirrels and chipmunks, them first. The primate's territory now has a guardian, a four-legged security guard. 

 

corena explores her new home

 

Barking at sounds from the woods across the road in the dark identifies dog to all of them. She says to them, Y'all stay where you belong...enter my territory at  your own risk...I am Dog...next thing to Wolf. She's naïve to the ways of the wild, has much learning ahead, learning by her own experience. Martha will be a good teacher for her at first, a dog who has lived here all her life. Martha is not much of a hunter. She likes to play chase, make them run, anything that will run. If it won't run, then she runs. Only problem, I don't want dog rambling with Martha, especially not with her sister, Jolene. I will stop her rambling with them before it starts. I'll call her in the house when Jolene comes around. I don't even want her to know Jolene. Corena will not be a rambling dog. It's too dangerous now for a dog that rambles, and all the more for one that doesn't know her way around on the ground, among the dogs of the area or the wildlife. She has not yet learned about donkeys. One day she may want to play, may taunt one to play chase and learn why dogs stay out of the donkey meadow. Maybe. They may take to dog and want to play chase.

jack and jenny munch hay

 

This morning Corena went with me to take carrots to the donkeys. She squealed and sniffed at Jenny and Jack from our side of the fence. Even yesterday, giving them grain, dog nearby was no occasion for alarm. They paid the dog no mind. Sophia was watching from nearby. They looked at her, though not with any inclination to dart away. They did not even grunt or snort at Corena. It just now occurred to me she is close to the same size as baby donkey. Both donkeys are out of sorts. In their shared grief, their zeal has gone out of them. At carrot time, since the baby left the body, I hand one a chunk of carrot, either one will take a bite and let the rest of it fall to the ground. They are even slow to take a bite of carrot. The first morning, neither one wanted carrot. I threw them on the ground to let mourning donkeys pick the carrots up later when they felt like it. As of yesterday, Jenny's "foal heat" turned on, the heat donkeys go into a couple weeks after giving birth. Jenny is a hormonal salad in this time. She is so inward she only wants to be alone or beside Jack. Their love is visible in the ways they console one another. At this moment, they are munching hay, side by side, almost touching.  

cat wants to play

It is a rainy day, short-sleeve Christmas, comfortable inside and out. I feel for the dog, just as she's become acquainted with her new territory and wants to learn it all now, it rains three days and nights. I dreamed, just before waking up, I was looking through the window at the donkey meadow and saw a new baby donkey standing close to Jenny, smaller than Miss Ed. This falls in line with my dreams of the last years characterized by a familiar scene with something missing that belongs there, or something there that is not there. Most often only one thing. I'd like to see Jack and Jenny adopt Corena as their surrogate baby. She's gentle with them and likes to be close to them. They're not even alarmed by her while they're eating grain, when they don't even want me around, knowing I've never challenged them for it. I'll not anticipate one way or the other, but wait and see what develops between them. The donkeys tolerate Martha in the meadow, but not near them. Corena walked all around them while they were grazing hay, her first time meeting them. Whatever they make of her, I can see they are as receptive to and wide open with her as with me. She put her nose to Jenny's grain, an inch away, the other side of the fence. Jenny will not let me that close to her grain without snorts and stompings, forget the fence. Their relationship with dog and cat bears paying attention to.   

sophia in her comfort zone

 

 

 

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CORENA CORENA BLACK DOG CORENA

dog and likeness

 

Drove to town today for lunch with friend Bob I've seen from time to time over the last thirty-plus years, though seldom to sit and have a conversation with for an hour. I'm glad he likes La Mexicana, my favorite restaurant in town, where the food is not Tex-Mex. It's cooking as done in Latin America, the cook from La Paz, Bolivia. We have another good Latin restaurant run by Cubans who came here from the Canary Islands, Las Palmas. Also a new Tex-Mex restaurant that is nice. And the one that has been here for years, Mis Arados (My Plow), known as the best restaurant in Sparta since it opened. It is family owned. The kids that were toddlers, waddling among the people at tables spreading cheer with their glowing round faces, are grown up now, worked through high school as waiters in the restaurant, and now have husbands, wives and babies. One beautiful young woman I watched grow up in there, I saw at the gas station a few weeks ago, she had a baby in the car. I said, "You have a baby." She said, "I have three." My jaw bounced off the cement between my feet like a golf ball.

curled up waiting

 

Next stop, the grocery store for donkey carrots, then the drug store where I saw Teena, who gifted me Sofia, and hardware store. From town out to Stratford, a township in the western part of the county, to deliver my friend Carole's Christmas present. We don't do that. However, I saw a book in Chris Davis's shop about Zentangles, which I knew Carole did not have and needed. I'd have bought it on sight for her in August, or any other month. I called it a Christmas present due to time of year. I drove home over the mountain on Spicer Mountain Road that connects hwy 221 with hwy 18 at Whitehead, singing, "good dog Corena," simple words dog can understand from words I speak to her. It is a slow road with curves galore, a third of it mud on a rainy day like today, though not bad, and great scenery, blue mountains in the distance, black cows in the foreground, the meadows still green on a short-sleeve day two days before Christmas. The girl at the grocery store register was one I didn't remember seeing before. I looked at her name tag. Corena. Bells rang all over the inside of my head. Why hadn't I thought of it yet?

   dog at home  

 

I'd been feeling that Rena was missing something the name needed, unable to find what it was. It was like the name Rena was too lean, needed some fat on her bones. I was thinking of calling her Black Rena driving into the parking lot, spoke it a few times to hear it and liked it. Thought of the song, Black Betty. Great name for a dog, but she's not a Betty. I think it was the way the girl at the register spelled Corena that caught my eye. She was gorgeous with black wavy hair. Lots of new spellings these days. My favorite is Mysti. I also know a Karina. Co-Rena. Rena modified. It fits and flows with Sofia. In sound, o-e-a, only the C-n and the S-f distinguish them from one another. Yet the names have very different sounds. Sofia is soft as a down cushion. Corena, too, is soft with a sense of self-assertion, like bear fur. All the way to Carole's and all the way home I sang Corrina Corrina, "I love Corrina, tell the world I do." I was out there on the highway in the rain singing to my new dog, "Corena Corena, won't you come on home, aint had no lovin since you been gone."

dog says I wish it would stop raining

so I could go outside and bark

 

I remembered Aster, and having no dog for eight years, like Corena was Aster come home after being gone so long, riding the mountain roads in her seat again. The feeling is very much like having Aster return after long absence. Wherever this dog's soul came from, she found her way to me. She has the same soulful eyes as Aster. I know it is the breed of dog, lab mix, that determines much of their behavior, personalities and thinking. It's not the same dog, but like the same dog. What more could I ask? A chance to have Aster back as a young dog. Curiously, it's like we already know each other. Today was dog's day to learn by experience another aspect of living here, riding in the car and waiting for sometimes a few hours. I keep windows open enough to let air pass through, but not for her to escape. Twice I left her in the car for an hour and twice for a half hour. I took her out for a chance to pee after the first hour but she did not. Let  her out later and she did not need to. I put her outside for bathroom before we left. After we'd been home a few hours, after my nap, I sat with her and thanked her for being a patient riding companion today, thanked her for finding me, hugged her, told her she has legs like a deer and beautiful eyes. Big yawn.

corena corena

 

 

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