Thursday August 27 at 6pm Alaska time
Old Harbor Books in Sitka in Conversation with author John Straley.
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Fog but more sun today, so far not much rain. I better mow the lawn soon or I might lose some of the neighbors grandchildren in our lawn over the winter. I might have already. I don’t recognize the above toy at all. I’ll start a sweep for a small hand sticking up above the surface of green.
Dot likes children you think she would find them but she just plays with the toys.
Today I had a frustrating visit to the post office. Not for any reason to do with the USPS. I love our post office and the people who work there. USPS is the best way to send and receive things in rural America that you can carry in your arms. Private companies are so much more expensive and I have found them to be so much less reliable. I once had a manuscript sent by private carrier make it to New York City two weeks late and it was clear that the package, my manuscript, had broken open and laid out on some tarmac in the rain. There were even tire prints on the soaked and scraped together disordered pages. So, never again. I love and trust my post office. Today I was just not prepared. I tried to pay my bills while on site, I didn’t have enough envelopes. Didn’t bring stamps, didn’t have the right address to send the new Richard Nelson Biography to Yi-Fu Tuan, and all the while Jan and Nancy Ricketts were waiting for me out on the deck of a nice restaurant waiting to order lunch. The more I try and rush the more disorganized I got. Also I have to say that Dot does not help. I tried to write checks in the car in the parking lot but Dot has decided if there are only two of us in the car she IS GOING TO RIDE IN THE FRONT SEAT! I have tried to negotiate this with her but it is impossible while driving and nearly impossible while writing checks on a steering wheel. I think Dot at nine months has almost broken the hundred pound mark. She has a very sneaky way of being a pest. She sits next to you, leans in and gives you a little lick on the cheek. Very sweet and puppy like. Darling. Then she gets a little more aggressive with the licks until I start to laugh and then tell her to stop, THEN she lunges at what ever it was that was her target in the first place: like your pen, or the checkbook you are writing on, Then she proceeds to dance around in a kind of victory dance while eating the said object. The worst was recently when she snuggled, smooched, then lunged, fast as a snake and grabbed the full warm soda can I was holding, bit into it and instantly became a happy dog fountain in the back of the car out of my grasp.
I threatened to pull over and put her up for sale on Craig’s List that very second. But the photo I took of her dripping fizzy water in the back of the Honda for the ad was too adorable. Really. How could I sell her?
Her training is at a strange point. When I got to the restaurant today, I figured she needed to pee, so I let her out and she jumped over me before I could get the leash on and she was off to visit all the homeless guys and the young people smoking pot in the down town park. She would not recognize her name, she would not come. But everyone in the park loved her. They asked me her name and what kind of dog she was, she hung around and gave them all smooches but she would not come near me or the leash. Then she took off and started to cross the main street by the City Offices. Then I stopped chasing her and said. “Okay I’m going to meet Jan and Nancy for Lunch. I hope you find a nice new family,” then I turned around and started walking to the restaurant the opposite direction. Of course she started to follow me. By the time I came even with our car, she had hopped in and was sitting in the back like a little angel. Nancy, who is 95, said, “Well of course, she is disobedient but she’s not stupid. She needed a ride home.” Which is true.
Nancy is trying to talk Jan into getting a walker. I think mostly because Nancy is tired of leaving Jan in the dust on their walks. Of course Jan is resistant. I have suggested the walker enough, her’s and mine relationship is a bit like Dot’s and mine. If I stop trying and turn around she may come along.
Her’s and Dot’s relationship is also funny. Jan can’t move, well at all. She also falls easily and Dot is like an untethered wrecking ball on the deck of a heaving battle ship, most of the time. But Jan yells at her in long complicated sentences. I may be reading downstairs, and I’ll hear, “Dot, you cannot chew on my shoe when I’m walking towards the stairs. It’s dangerous. Dot! Goddamn it bring that shoe back! I’m not kidding. I’m going to sit on this top stair until you bring my shoes back. Oh thank you sweetie, I love you too. Dot GODDAMN YOU BRING MY GLASSES BACK!” And so on. She might resolve the game herself. I will offer to referee and she will ask me to sort things out. I will go up and Dot recognizes when we are both upset she acts like the little angel again as if it were all Jan’s fault in the first place. She really is a devil.
Why do we love her? I’m not sure.
I was talking to Yi Fu last night, he is remarkably fun to talk to on the phone. We started talking about Beethoven and ended up talking about Simone Weil… one of my favorite theological thinkers. I was surprised to learn that Yi Fu is a Christian very influenced by Weil. Weil died before the end of the second world war. She gave away most of her food ration to needy people, She said she preferred to eat only the rations that the jews in the death camps were allowed to eat. She had been born in eastern Europe of Jewish heritage. She became Catholic but did not fully convert or I believe take the sacrament because she believed essentially that “God revealed himself by his absence.” She didn’t want to be inside. Which is interesting and an existential way of being a Christian. Yi-Fu last night said to me, “I believe that as God pulled away the the Universe was revealed. Allowing us to love the Universe and God in his absence.” If I understand this correctly God has to pull back, God has to be unknowable in order for us to experience the Universe. It could not be otherwise, because God would overpower all creation. God pulls back and leaves us the Universe, with all it’s mechanical flaws and problems to love in his place. The cross, and the story of his son, represents this essential relationship.
Maybe that’s why Jan and I love Dot so much.
Here is a poem I wrote long ago.
AFTER SIMONE WEIL
Like a confused lover
I waited for you
on the wrong corner,
looking at my watch, each moment
confirming our missed appointment.
The unsubstantial business of the world,
the empty busses and garbage trucks,
whirled like mists
around my immoveable heart.
I imagined you waiting for me
somewhere
holding steadfast in your faith.
Not calling the police,
not wanting me
to appear foolish.
"How you must love me," I thought,
"to make us both wait so long."
jhs
Here is a little section from the ending of my book “What is Time to a Pig?”
