May 14th, 2008 §
Mal was found in the garden, unhatched, and incubated by a black chicken. She came later than the rest, towards the end of the summer, once they had already fledged and left the hen house. It was clear she was a mallard, not a muscovy, and with that the decision was made. A week later she was standing in our kitchen, peeping and looking around curiously, the hen house replaced with a Japanese apartment. We nervously welcomed her, like new parents, attempting to erase the chicken imprint and raise her with an affinity towards people (or at least us).
Mal loved the camera from day one.
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May 6th, 2008 §
Things that are bizarrely out of proportion give me the weebie-jeebies. As a kid, weird images would pop into my head as I was drifting off to sleep, like a massively over-sized tire, and I’d go all weebie-jeebie. Usually I could counteract this by shifting position - laying with my face on the pillow and my butt in the air - which generally normalized size and stopped the spin. I’m drawn to Salvador Dali’s ‘The Elephants’ because it induces a very similar effect, and also euphoria, making me secretly want to own a copy so I can careen by it in bliss.
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May 2nd, 2008 §
It’s been two years and one month (give or take) since my last blog post. I took a break for a while though I’m not exactly sure why. In retrospect it might have been the silencing effect of button-down shirts, or maybe there just wasn’t much to say. If I wanted to be really self-deprecating I’d tell you I forgot how to talk. The truth is, as always, more mundane than that: I had a bad case of tunnel vision. You know the kind, so bad that even your mind huddles to the front of your head, right behind the eyes, and you feel like you are running all the time? I don’t think I have to remind anyone of the fact that it’s damn hard to write while running, and I’m nobody to buck convention. In the meantime, two years have slipped by with nary a peep, until this spring, when I remembered how to mosey.
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May 29th, 2006 §
A couple of days ago I received an e-mail from my mom informing me that she had to put her dog Apollo, a white standard poodle, to sleep on Thursday. Since then she’s been sorting through old photographs, gathering a visual overview of Apollo’s time here and I thought I’d add a few memories to that compendium, as a small farewell.
Apollo was a special dog, and when I say special I mean that in every sense, every definition, that the word encompasses (except perhaps the mathematical one). It was because of his very unique specialness that he wound up at our house; born blind and with weakened back legs, aficionados of purebred poodle pups didn’t really want anything to do with him. And so it was that a very fluffy and cute white puppy, burdened with the weighty name of Apollo, joined our family.
When he was still small, small enough for me to carry, I liked to take him to Franklin Street (downtown Chapel Hill) and the University of North Carolina campus because that’s what people with dogs do. He was happy enough in the campus parks, but as soon as his feet touched concrete he froze… wouldn’t move a muscle. And so began the hallmark peculiarities that made Apollo a particularly lovable variation on a theme. I’m not fond of poodles or the pretension that surrounds their very existence, but Apollo was different with his endearing wobbliness and propensity to run into things, even though his breath was usually pretty stinky.
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