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Tuesday 27 December 2011

Notes From A Dogwalk XIII

Dog rolls in rasping fallen leaves. A stick clatters to the ground nearby and we all pause, startled. We wait together for the intruder to Show Himself. Then, as if on cue, we relax together, returning to writhing, stick chewing, musing on life. The colours have gone now, no ecstatic fireworks, the final shouts of summer have died away to sleeping brown and dignified twigs.

A small stone rolls past me and on down the steep hillside. I will shortly resume my clamber to a new view, the brown one rests his head on my shoulder, waiting.

Thursday 22 December 2011

Notes From A Dogwalk XII

Scratch fingers deep into folds of skin, rough affection; tough love for dogfriends. No herds today, just a faraway horse and cart, heading to the woods for fuel collecting. This land is picked clean by foragers; no stray branches or quiet trunks, all is empty, swept. Maybe that's why I can't feel life in the woods, no rotting detritus, thick layers of squirming mulch, rich in damp wriggling rot. The blood of the earth is missing, where is the regeneration, the bacteria blessing, churning death back to life.
There's life but in a different way; heat and cooking for the village gypsy families, survival in a cold winter. To keep themselves alive they take richness from the earth, leaving stony ground and scrabbling trees.

Tuesday 20 December 2011

Notes From A Dogwalk XI

The sun gleams on the yellow grass here at the top of the hill. The haze in the air is thicker today and it veils the land in a white blur, throwing into sharp relief the bunch of dry, petrified flowerheads, clinging to the stony ground near my outflung foot. One of the dogs is shedding hair and I can pull clumps of him out of his body and throw it to the ground. He doesn't seem to mind, standing idly, ears cocked to the shouts of the shepherd on the neighbouring slope. The hair lies like fluffs of scattered feather; more usually a sign of a frenzied attack. Here lies the shameful record of a bird murder. This dog is more commonly the perpetrator than the recepient of such an act. Let his fur lie here as a record of that day.

Sunday 18 December 2011

Notes From A Dogwalk X

Today, as I come to the edge of the ploughed field, I can see two jeeps moving slowly up the far hillside; I see that they both have men standing in the back of them and then I see that the shepherd moving across the flat field at the hill base has his sheep collected together, a small, tightly bunched clump of brown, moving carefully across the wide green. I see all this and I think Hunters.

Today I go West instead of North, through the scrubby trees at the side of the dirt track. I'll walk until the start of the apple plantation. And so I find myself in thorn trees and sharp bushes, all sprouting into multiple prickled twigs, like cancer. The bushes spring from the ground, curling, licking fire at me and the trees hang branches down towards me like groping fingers.

So I walk through fingers and flame towards the apple plantation. There are gunshots in the background and I think about fighting and war. About how all humans could be fighters; every single one of us has that in us, the only difference is that some would be better than others. I think about how lucky I am to have grown up in a country where fighting over my land, in my towns, with murder moving from house to house, is a memory more distant than horses and carts.

The dogs are nervous, they stand attentive, sniffing and listening. Strange howls come from over the hillside; they almost sound like a dog.

Thursday 15 December 2011

Notes From A Dogwalk IX

The leaves have blown away from the base of the walnut tree and I can sit on the thick gnarled rootlump and place my feet, boot heavy, on the bare brown ground. The air is thinly blue and the light hits a white haze on the hills in the distance. I have eaten too many sugary things and feel sticky and sick.

There are no leaves left on the walnut tree now, not one. The twigs spring out like feelers, branches, breathing alveoli and I imagine spongy redness enclosing them like an animal lung.

Monday 12 December 2011

Notes From A Dogwalk VIII

And of all the things I'm thinking, I can only write about my body odour; how the dog wants to push his nose into every crevice and I don't care enough to actually wash.

These hills are a maze of trees and valleys, I can take a new route every day, find new views of the same village. Sit on a carpet of twisted leaves, rest back aginst another grey rock and watch the dogs watching things.

Sounds float up over the plain; a car revving a loud exhaust, chainsaw buzzing, dogs barking and I am reminded of waking up one morning on a Danube beach in Romania and hearing a village wake up nearby. Just a low, sandy island, thick trees lining the banks, no sign of humans, no cars, no horns, no music, no sirens. Just cocks crowing and dogs barking; a gentle animal cacophony.

Thursday 8 December 2011

Notes From A Dogwalk VII

Hot day, dreams of boats and Danube waters. The dogs stand poised in the sun, heat bounces off sleek coats. I'm lazy today, a morning of deep thoughts in the big town. Thoughts that slide away like melting butter, slipping from reach, back to the dreamworld. What Bulgaria is. What is Bulgaria?
A noisy market of homegrown veg. Gypsies slipping through the crowd. Faces worn, faces weathered. A thousand cabbages. Vans filled to bursting with huge cabbages. A hardy crop, no mango glamour, aubergine celebrity. Just cabbages, mild and reliable. Thousands of pale green footballs.
I hear bells, and goats start to drift over the faraway hillside. A man calls after them, unintelligible.

Monday 5 December 2011

Notes From A Dogwalk VI

Today I wanted to write about scraps of plastic blowing ragged in the cold wind, scattered fragments of weathered litter; the consensual tipping ground, just out of sight of this village.

I wanted to write about the lacy drumroll of a flock of startled birds, wheeling away from the juicy brambles and up to safety.

But I lost my pen, it fell out of my pocket and so I had to settle for sitting in the silent trees, among the thick leaf carpet and settled branches, watching the dog rip apart a rotted tree trunk. Her nose wrinkled up in a savage growl as she worried away at the powdering chunks and I remembered the time I walked up a hill in Spain, taking a shortcut through the back of a village and how I found a captured wild boar, held prisoner in boards and wire and thick grey mud.

How this boar was round and brown and blind in one ugly scabbed eye; but most of all I remember how its nose was long and flexible, almost like the start of a trunk. It would explore you; gentle, enquiring, grasping, rubbery.

I never saw a wild pig before, only heard them at night when I slept outside; my fear gradually rising as I heard their terrible chomping and snorting, smelt their thick musky scent. It stayed on my bedroll for weeks; dogs would growl at it, hackles rising.

Saturday 3 December 2011

Notes From A Dogwalk V

Last search for rosehips, pushing winding fingers through prickles and thorns; catching my worn jacket, almost in holes, close to unsightliness.

Take these scarlet buds; chop and soak and boil and strain until you have a syrup. My cold weather orange; a guard against illness.

There is a carpet of flickered leaves, fallen in a slow shedding. My dog disappears into the undergrowth, returning with a fresh piece of spine to chew. The eternal fascination of new smells.