Like most Canadian men I own more than one winter coat. They are purpose built for certain activities, certain weather conditions and, above all, certain temperatures.
This morning I pulled on my snow shovelling coat. John Deere sold them to farmers once upon a time. A winter coat made for working in.
I had not worn it since last winter and there was something in one of the pockets. I reached in and pulled it out.
It was The Hammer's collar, leash and a couple empty shit bags. I had not used the coat since the day she died.
I immediately held the collar and leash to my nose. Ten months on it smelled like she had never gone. I put them down by the chair between the speakers I listen to music in to return to later. Put the empty shit bags into the pile of small bags I have been adding to this past year so I have something to pick up my next dog's shit with.
I will be ok once I am half through the bottle of Arrans on the counter.
6 comments:
Been reading Proust again?
Did you just translate that from the opening line of an obscure French spiritual text?
Hmmmm.....a modern day Voltaire?....hmmmm
No, but there are some goodies out there, including a lovely spoof of Sartre that appeared a couple of decades ago in the Utne Reader (not sure what the true origin is.
http://pvspade.com/Sartre/cookbook.html
This fits well with the current state of affairs.
Voltaire, who wrote little on forestry, sawmill economics, or raw log exports is read sparsely by sawmill workers such as I. I have, however, resolved to read both Voltaire and Proust in the New Year, should I live that long.
Small doses, Beer, small doses. Voltaire had the razor wit, but didn't always see the broader picture, writing off the French North American adventure as a few hectares of snow. But the chapter in Candide about the opening shots of the war between the Bulgars and the Abares is typical of the incisive and acerbic comment he produced. Proust has fabulous insights, mostly about personal discovery, but the prose is dense: I recall reading a sentence that went on for several pages, a difficult phenomenon for those of us with sometimes challenged attention spans. His most famous passage is about being transported back into the past on the strength of an olfactory recollection, to the power of which I can personally attest. Working in a fish camp in Chapple Inlet in 1972, June 15 was the first day for coho opening, and as the first coho came down the grading table, I got a whiff of it and was immediately transported to a fish market in Sausalito, California at an age when I could only look up at the refrigerator case, and my conscious mind made the connection that the salmon the Maggie had bought back in the mid-50s was a coho. Same for Proust's recounting the emotional stirrings brought on by a hearing of a Vinteuil sonata, but then, most of know the emotional havoc that can be wrought by hearing a musical selection linked to events of personal emotional importance. By the way, France is as messed up as the US, Italy, Greece... we're not far behind the pack, but at least there are motherfuckin'' voices of twistedness to hold the beacon.
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