Conversation with a chicken is not always and easy or steady-flowing thing;
often we sit in companionable silence, with nothing to report or examine.
After one such period this week I asked whether more sitting had changed her
view of the world. Once the herd would graze and move; now a single chicken
moves from sitzplatz to sitzplatz.
She responded after a moment’s reflection, “It’s lower.”
“What is?”
“My view of the world. About two inches.”
I explained that I’d been thinking about the relationship between events as we
all experience them and history, that which turns up in our recounting. The
ratio is like an iceberg, most events never reach a level which makes them
worth including in a story.
Mimo disagreed.
“To me it’s all of a piece. This week, for example, there were seven dawns.
The crows returned. No melon seeds on two of the days. And there was that
soft stuff. All of it history.”
“The muffin was history? Stale muffin?”
“Quite nice.”
“Different subject: have you seen snakes?”
“Not recently.”
“Only, I passed one out front, just now, sunning itself by the road.”
“Did you kill it?”
“Left it alone.”
“Back here the cats would kill it. So what kind of events don’t rise to the
level of story?”
“If I told you, they’d be in a story.”
“Not necessarily. You could present them in the form of analysis, with
statistics and a power point.”
“What do you understand by power point?”
“Just a phrase I heard. And if you tell a story to a chicken, does that really
count as telling?”
I nodded. “The week began with a series of unfortunate events. You’ll have
noticed the electrical trucks and the tree down on the wire?”
“Noisy.”
“And then the heavy rain.”
“Nasty.”
“Drain out front was blocked.”
“Probably by snakes.”
“Then another drain blocked, inside.”
“Isn’t that usually where they block? I suppose a horse could block a drain on
the outside.”
“Why do you think drains are blocked by animals?”
“Motives can be very mysterious.”
I let that pass. “And then I avoided emergency surgery.”
“What is that?”
“Something none of us wants. I was drinking a glass of water. Just before I
swallowed, I felt something odd in my mouth. Turned out to be about a one inch
sliver of glass. A bit of the rim had broken off.”
“You lost me.”
“The point is that swallowing glass is bad for gods.”
“We swallow stones.”
“Gods shouldn’t swallow glass slivers.”
“I’ll take your word for it. And then what?”
“I finished a draft of the essay I’m writing and put it in the hands of a
reader.”
“Is that bad?”
“No, it’s good. I’m thinking these essays might be going somewhere.”
“Is that good?”
“Could be.”
“Do they fly or walk?”
“What?”
“Essays. When they go somewhere?”
I thought a change of topic might be appropriate so I explained that the other
god, the one who got married, was off exploring Mediterranean beaches.
“What’s a beach?”
“It’s a piece of land between the land and the sea. You lie on it.”
“Why?”
“Or you can sit.”
“And think?”
“Or not.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do gods sit or lie on a beach?”
“Motives can be very mysterious."
After a quiet start to my Saturday afternoon, I decided that with rain in the
forecast it was moment to harvest our wine grapes. I wish I could claim
prescience, but I planted merlot and cabernet without thinking about global
warming. The pinot has done nothing this year, while those two vines (one of
each) produced about a cooler and a half of fine-looking specimens.
I was pleased they chose to grow up a Douglas fir tree and so extend the amount
of late-afternoon sun they captured. But the “wine” pleased no one. Last year
there was no harvest; smoke from wildfires ruined the crop. This year the
vines grew into the dogwood tree. Some of the bends were right angles, so the
harvest was hard and sweaty and even involved crashing on concrete. Western,
macho grape harvesting. Bound to produce a better kind of wine. I’m going to
experiment with leaving stems in the fermenting liquid, which is said to
increase tannins, possibly in a good way.
Tannic wines should be laid to rest for a while. The additional benefit of
this method is that I can postpone discovering that I have made yet another
undrinkable bottle.
Arsenal won. Slaughtered Spurs. Mimo was delighted. No idea why. Motives…
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
