Military Backup (transferred)

 7-28-2014 (transferred from my 55 mph blog)

Rex got a walk up to Main Street, where we strolled the shops (tattoo parlor, vintage store, CPA, architect, new marijuana outlet). When we got back Murphy wanted out, to goggle at a passerby and sniff her way along a neighbor's fence. Rex and I came too, as military support. There are supposed to be fierce cats in this neighborhood, and I know one for sure, an orange beast who terrorized my terrier Missy several years ago. 

On this trip, a black and white cat disappeared into an alley, then an orange one—younger, I think, than the old bandit who caused Missy problems. The orange cat advanced down the alley at Murphy, who seemed unconcerned, sniffing at the wine bottles in a neighbor's recycling bin. I took a step toward him and he disappeared, but he circled round to come up the driveway. There is a little cut-through to the trash can there, and, sure enough, when I looked down it, he was creeping up on us. When I appeared, he fled. Murphy seemed unaware of these interactions, but I doubt she was so nonchalant. I imagine her whirling, claws out, if the tabby had gotten near. 

Rex is usually patient with this sheepdog role—it's extra time out of doors, after all—but today he kept pulling hard toward every smell. I was taking notes in my journal, and it was hard to balance pen and paper.

The neighbor who walked his cat down the sidewalk a few days ago came out and put something in a car. A voice in conversation was audible from his porch, and I saw an older man with a cup there. Murphy investigated behind a fir bush, peeing I think. As she came out, she shook herself, freeing herself from spider web. We made our slow way back to the steps, Murphy stalking on hard, lion steps. 

When Rex hurried in, she sat to consider. I opened the door wide enough that she could see that was no trap from her rival. She and Rex have been skirmishing at his food bowl, and she has taken up residence on top of the plastic storage box that holds their treats.

A few minutes later as I cleaned the cat box, she went to the door again. She must be beginning to feel comfortable outside the house. We went out. I hosed down the cat box as she wandered. No Rex this time. 

                           With my slowness

                           I stop the world.

                           I choose the time--

                           you can wait.

                                         --Murphy the Cat

Murphy, World Traveler (transferred)

 transferred from my travel writing blog, 55 mph

5-31-2014, originally 

Murphy exploring the alley in Washington

My cat Murphy comes and butts her face at me as I write at the computer. She is demanding I feed her once again. I feed her a lot now because under her long fur she is angular and bony . Sometimes she throws up what I gave her, or a thin clear liquid.  

I get up and stir the food in her bowl. Stirring brings the gravy to the top, and often that is enough to get her to eat again. Sometimes I open a fresh can. Every few days she takes medicine, and then she eats a lot. She and I have this conversation about food five or six times a day. She has kidney disease, and if I don't get her to eat, she will waste away.  

Her name is Murphy. I think she is fifteen. She came to me off the street, but one time I was told her age by the friends in whose house she was born (she left because kittens grew up aggressive and chased her away). She might be older. 

When I go on my summer expeditions with my hound dog Rex, I have been leaving Murphy home with house sitters, but this year she is coming along. I can't ask a sitter to interact with her as intensively as I have this spring. And the water at our house has turned so salty that no house sitter would be happy staying here.

I'm glad I'm taking her. I've wanted to every year (and she has wanted to go, jumping up in the van and yowling), but I was afraid it wouldn't be workable. Last summer, however, I had my eyes opened. I camped with my daughter in Colorado, and she brought her cats along, Lelu to be fitted with a prosthesis by a vet there, and Mika so she wouldn't be left home alone. I camped in my Toyota van, and they stayed in the VW bus. I was surprised how good a home the VW turned out to be for them.

I had some questions to answer before I made the decision. Would Murphy handle the drive okay? Could we travel without losing her?

Murphy is an indoor-outdoor cat. At home when I walk Rex, Murphy often comes along, and she will follow us along the shore, even a mile. She hunts, and I'm almost certain she has interacted with the skunks, possums, raccoons, and armadillos that live here. I wasn't worried that she would be frightened and run away if she were suddenly out of doors. But how would she behave in unfamiliar territory? And would she put up with not getting to leave the bus some days?

I went forward cautiously. I drove Rex and Murphy to a different spot on the shore, outside Murphy's territory, and I let them loose. Rex did his usual running around, and Murphy began to explore the plants that have grown up on the exposed lakebed. She didn't streak off, but I did have to walk fast a couple of times to keep up with her. When it was time to go back I wondered if I would have to corral her and carry her, but, no, she followed, and when I opened the van, she hopped up into it. So, we could be out of doors, as long as there was good visibility.  

Then I took Murphy along with us as we visited my daughter in Oklahoma. It's a seven-hour drive. The carrier was in, and a cat box. I let her roam free, and after about two minutes of complaint, she found a place to settle. She came to my knee a couple of times to ask about it all. Once she got up in my lap and purred. The return trip went well, and a second trip, too, so that answered one question. She could handle the drive . She didn't throw up, but she didn't eat while we were on the road, so I may have to spend a multiple days at campsites more often this year. On trip two, she ate in the evening after we arrived.  

I boarded Murphy at a vet in Oklahoma the first trip, but on the second we stayed in my daughter's driveway in the VW bus (plugged into the garage for AC, and one night, heat). Rex and Murphy could co-exist in a small space, I found, though it was best to raise the poptop and feed her on the surface up there, particularly if I were going to leave the bus. More than once I stepped out only to come back to Rex gobbling Murphy's food.  

My daughter and I spent spent a lot of time in the fenced backyard with the two of them. Once Murphy had thoroughly explored the yard, she wanted to get out of it. She could slip through the sagging gate or climb the mesh of the fence, or slip under. I had to give her my attention or off she'd go. I soon saw, however, that she didn't travel far, just into the shadow under the bus, or strolling toward the sidewalk. It was easy to get her back.  

I looked up once from weeding, though, and she was nowhere in sight. I crouched to look under the bus, but she wasn't there I climbed the street, calling for her. “Murphy! Murphy!”

What was I doing thinking I could take a cat on the road? I reproached myself. 

My daughter's house abuts a creek overgrown with bushes and trees. I followed the path along it, but no Murphy. I crossed the bridge and asked the workmen at the bed and breakfast. They hadn't seen her.  

Finally, I put Rex on his lead. “Find Murphy,” I urged him as we hurried along. We looked in the bushes in the empty lot across the creek, then crossed to the bed and breakfast. “Find Murphy!” I said again. Out she strolled, from a bush at the edge of the bridge. She had gone a house away.  

Murphy got a lot of practice being cooped up in the bus. She sometimes tried to get out, but all I had to do was put my hand in her way. Her desire to go and explore may build up on the trip, though, so I've looked into harnesses. That is the one part of our preparation that has not gone well. I bought a harness for her, but I can't get it over her head. I'm not sure she would tolerate it anyway, as she rears back when I try to slip it past her ears. I may get another type, shaped like an X that reaches up from under her belly and velcros closed. I need to get in gear if I am going to do that, though, because I haven't found any in the stores, just online, and it may have to be made on order. If we don't get a harness, however, I think we will be okay.

If I lose Murphy on this trip, I will regret it bitterly. I do have another choice, to stay home this summer (and probably the next, given the slow progress of her illness). But I am looking into it carefully and taking precautions. And there's this: last night as I was setting laundry in the bus to take in to the laundromat (the salty water here bleaches out my tee shirts), Murphy hurried out of the dark and jumped up in the bus.  Are you packing to leave? her mowr seemed to ask. You had better take me too!

The Ancients (transferred)

 (Transferred from my 55 mph blog)

I wrote this up from my journals today as I am putting together my book.

  

2009 6-12            The Ancients

           A little fly dances to my nose

            and out of reach.

            My arm follows up and out.

            I return to my sitting.

            I was tired and slow that day.  I poked around camp until noon, knowing I’d be staying over.  When I went out I followed a portion of the Falls Trail, my body aching. The trail took me by gray ant nests, huge ones.  Walking toward me, a woman grinned.  I puzzled over her smile as I hiked until I realized why.  It was my tee shirt.  I was wearing one of my favorites, black with white petroglyphs all over.  Mixed with the usual petroglyphs of goats and thunderbirds were  a space saucer and Mickey Mouse and a jackalope and who knows what else. 

            When I got back I sat in the shade to write.  A fly pestered me.  He piggybacked on my hand as I wrote, then danced around my shirt.  After a while I lay down my journal and straightened my back to meditate.  The fly returned. 

            I went up to the Visitor’s Center--I  was at Bandelier National Monument--and sat in an outdoor courtyard.  Ravens were talking, herk, herk, awp.  I saw a feather or twig drop from them, but when I went over, it wasn't there.  Raven trick.

            My doctor had told me about Bandelier, said it was his favorite place to go.  He and I share an interest in American Indian art and ancient sites, so I thought I’d give it a try.  I understood why he liked it when I went out to the cliff houses that afternoon.  From the trail I could see many dark openings, some natural, some clearly made by people carving out the tuff (volcanic ash solidified into soft rock).  I saw one cave with a rectangular shape inside.  Depressions, marks, and tiny caves scarred the cliffside.  Higher on the path I could see bigger caves and people climbing into them. 

            It was hard on my knees, but I climbed the many steps to join them.  I was glad when I looked into a room.  It had a fire-blackened, gouged-out ceiling.  I wondered what it would be like to live in the tiny space and to look out into the flood plain below.  

            At the next cave house, bigger and higher on the cliff, I plucked up my courage and climbed to go in.  The ladder was roughly constructed out of logs of cottonwood or pine, steps tied on, and the hands of visitors had polished the wood shiny.  I have a fear of falling and went up fast, not giving myself time to look down.

            Holes riddled the wall in the house, some perhaps for drainage, higher ones to let out smoke.  The room was round, blackened above with soot, cream-colored near the floor.  A pictograph covered a part of the wall, almost obscured by flaking and smoke. Its dark zigzag circled an arc of the room in a fluid and messy movement, as if it had been applied with a large brush.  The zigzag ended in a more complex painting, perhaps the face of a man with a headband and stylized feather.  It had been painted more thickly and precisely in a colored plaster.  The feather image was white, and where hair might be, black.  The “face” was red and a side bar red, and the features or interior details black and white. 

            The space was appealing.  It was bigger than the earlier room, with a window, an alcove depression where things could be set, and a ledge for a fire.  I stuck my hand up where the smoke would go, and found a flue.  I wondered how far the flue would have to reach to let the smoke escape.  Logs with hook-shaped stubs had been plunged into the wall, places to hang baskets and things like clothing (I read the people at Bandelier wove cloaks of turkey feathers).  It was very satisfying to stand there, to imagine living there.  It probably was the size of my camper-bus inside, slightly bigger, and round, of course.  All the stuff you needed to live would be near to hand--food and blankets and weapons and your place to cook. And you could look out at the landscape. Not so different than the bus.

            My breath tightened as I looked down the ladder polished by so many hands and feet.  The ground seemed far below.  But others were waiting to come up, so I turned and fumbled with my foot for the first log. A step, a step, I told myself, and moved methodically down, holding my terror at bay.

            I lingered at two grottos where sunlight filtered between the cliffs down into slender cottonwoods, and a soft moisture filled the air.  The path didn’t enter the small refuges; too many feet would destroy the , I imagine.  They seemed cool and leafy and mysterious. 

            Below the cliffs, I walked among the adobe-brick houses, some built in front of cave houses, apparently to extend their space. Lower yet were partially fallen houses and nearer the stream, the ruins of others.  A circle of ruined rooms surrounded a kiva.

            Before I left Bandelier I walked a long way down Fry Trail and felt the landscape.  The walk was hard on my back and legs, but I was strengthening.  I saw two mule deer and a black beetle being eaten by red beetles.

            I wonder what the appeal is for me of American Indian ruins and petroglyphs.  Despite some family stories of Creek or Cherokee blood, I have no kin ties.  I did enjoy my time teaching the Kiowa tribe and learning about them, and I have friends from several tribes.  Really, though, I think the draw is something else.  The art that I see on the stones and walls, the simpler lifestyle, living in the land, those are things I want in my own life--art, simplification, oneness with the world around me.  They are all things that come from my traveling too.  Not the community the cliff dwellers had, though.  

            When I traveled to Ireland and Scotland, it was the ancients who intrigued me--the carvings of spirals and rings and cups, the barrows, the stone circles.  And when I taught linguistics I would have spent weeks if I could have on the roots of Indo-European.  What were the words that revealed their lives?  Spirit was shining, bear was taboo to name, no original word for wheel but words for salmon and beech and apple.  And the earliest words yet, before Indoeuropean, 13,000 years or more--I and nose, father and mother, sun and moon. 

            When I go on the road to lead a simpler life, I’m not looking for austerity or self denial.  Simplifying is not wanting things and not getting them; it’s turning to what is most essential.  

Women Who Feed the Ravens (transferred)

 Women Who Feed the Ravens (transferred from my 55 mph blog)

2013  7-13  

            I walked down to the elementary school playground, where I could let Rex off lead.  Usually he makes one circuit of the playground and then goes back to the gate.  If there is a dog to play with we might go two.  He uses the bathroom and sniffs around the base of the building. Sometimes, like yesterday, he snuffles in the grass and finds something to eat.

            As we walked along the play equipment, a raven croaked at us furiously from the top of the swing set.  I raised my phone to take his picture, which seemed to alarm him further.  He flapped into a tree, continuing his calls.  Another raven joined him.  

            On the other side of the chain link fence, an older woman was kneeling to dig in her garden.  Her small dog stretched onto the fence and barked.  The woman looked up from her lettuce.  “The crows are sure fussing today.”

            I showed her my i phone.  “It’s black and small.  Maybe they think I’ve got a dead raven.”

            She looked doubtful. 

            “My dog?”

            “I don’t think so.”   She snapped a lettuce leaf into her basket and added,  “I see ravens and crows all the time.  They come to my bird feeder.” 

            Rex trotted up the handicapped ramp to the school to sniff the entrance, and we continued around the playground.  A woman in a kerchief was sitting at the table on the far side of the playing field.  She didn’t have a dog, but a raven stood near her on the sidewalk.  As we neared, she suddenly stood and, stepping to a section of the grass by the walkway, spread her arms as if blocking passage.  The raven flew up and away.

            Rex ran to her and began snatching something from the grass.  It was the same area he’d found something to eat the day before.  “Go, go!” she shouted at him.  I hurried over.

            “I feed the raven,” she said, as I hauled Rex by his collar.  “Meat in the grass.” Her wide Slavic face was distressed.  “Dog no eat.”

            I fought to clip Rex’s lead. “The ravens?  You feed the ravens meat?” 

            She gave a sharp nod.  “Mama ravens need meat for babies.”

            No wonder they’d been fussing, I thought as we left.  Perhaps they had been calling each other to the feast--but they certainly had been warning each other about that interloper dog who gobbled bits they hadn’t found.  

editorial comment on "Bottle" by editor, Truancy

In the editorial introduction of Truancy 9, the editor-in-chief, Nin Harris, comments on my poem of the fantastic, "Bottle":

...[We] move to Scotland by way of Sarah Webb's "Bottle", a Selkie poem that was so intense, it caught me by the throat."

Thank you, Nin!

The writing in Truancy draws on folklore and fairy tale.  

Click the link to read the poem (and other writing in the issue) on Truancy's website:

https://truancymag.com/2021/07/31/bottle-by-sarah-webb/

Last Pieces

To Kim Mosley’s “Last Pieces”

The crow who makes a nest of the world looks for colors from the heart left behind on picnic tables or trailed behind careless pedestrians. He flaps down to the grime of a sidewalk and caws in triumph, Here’s a treasure! Memories of sunsets, a scrap of Jamaica turquoise against white sand, a bonfire of bodies shuddering in bed and the dull of oxblood as habit sets in, pencilled love notes, sweat-stained apologies, burnt bridges, frown lines and quirked-up dimples, twigs that scraped against kitchen windows and bedroom blinds, pleading Let me in, I’ll do anything if you let me stay! It’s a midden of a nest, and it steams with the ache of a thousand families, hums sometimes with Happy Birthday, with tears swallowed at Auld Lang Syne and the That’s Our Song of forty different couples. Reproving sniffs, eye-raised ecstasy, malice like a brown slug. A cattle dog’s bark is caught in the corner by somebody’s sob and a whisper It’ll be all right—hang on till I can get there. Once, There’s nothing you can do that would make me not love you—rarest of all and gleaming. People don’t drop those like a crumb from a sandwich. 

 —Sarah Webb

More Complicated

Now To Kim Mosley’s “More complicated!”

The day comes at you.
“Look at me!” it says,
bursting with sunlight and blossom,
making it almost impossible to see
the dirt below the forsythia—
yellow banging at your eyelids—
the pink of tulips, blue of Mexican tile
calling, No, me! Me! I’m the prettiest!

It wakes you up early, the day calling out, hello!
You didn’t really want to sleep, did you?
and keeps you buzzing—a coffee of a day
and three-margarita dance floor jumble in the evening.

When you stumble home at last,
there’s a moment of can I read myself to sleep?
and oh, did I forget ...

But wasn’t it fun, lost in the pretty bauble of the day,
the disco-ball of the night sending
shivers of light over everyone’s makeup?
and just one quiet dream deep in the dark
asking, where have I gone?

—Sarah Webb