1. first steps
I borrowed a mic from a friend who has a one-year-old
the kid kept grabbing the mic so we gave him a toy mic
then we gave him a toy ball
we rolled the ball down the hall and he chased it
when we tried to record our dog running in the alley
the dog thought the mic was a stick with a ball on the end
he grabbed the foam wind guard and ran off with it
in the early stages, children and dog are quite alike
2. by my calculations
if our dog is eight-and-a-half
than we’ve lived in our five-and-a-half for a dog’s age
we walk our dog other places besides our alley but let’s say we don’t
eight-and-a-half years of three times a day up and three times a day down
that’s eighteen thousand six hundred and fifteen lengths of alley
writing for one length of alley is harder than I thought it would be
it takes five minutes to walk from Fairmount to Saint Viateur
six if you walk slowly
seven if you walk as if intent on studying every scent
eight-and-a-half years if you walk as if sniffing for stories
. . . . .
The week we thought Isaac the Wonder Dog was dying (see August posts) I had a massive anxiety attack about In-situ Cité. In the long hours spent sitting and waiting on the concrete floors of vets and animal clinics my whole idea of neighbourhood and community and humanity underwent some major revisions.
