Today, March 20th, 2020, I’m participating in Two Writing Teachers’ Slice of Life Story Challenge.
2:00 pm (PST). Today I am pulling out the book Writing to senses> 59 exercises to ignite creativity and revitalize your writing by Laura Deutsch and I will use it like the Russian roulette. Instead of a gun I will use one finger. Wherever my finger lands, I will do the writing exercise suggested, no matter how hard I find it or how much I hate it. I am finding very difficult to focus right now, so a little bit of guidance won’t hurt.
2:15 pm (PST) Chapter 14 Bird talk, page 68. I think I can do this! The exercise suggests to find a place outdoors (yes!); listen deeply, and describe what I hear, and what stories arise from there. I will need to apply a lot of my mindfulness skills, otherwise my mind will wonder off. I will take the dogs for a walk and get the mail. I haven’t check it in 2 days. Our mailbox is around a mile and a half away, and I don’t want to take the car. When I return, we will see what I come up with. Til then now.
6:45 pm. (PST) Here we go.
I didn’t want to grab the leashes before I eat something, otherwise the dogs will know what I was up to, and wouldn’t stop barking until I have have swallowed my last bite. As soon as I was ready and put their harnesses on, my house was filled with barks of joy and wagging tails galore. I grabbed Clyde, who is 14 years old and blind, while Buck, our Andalucian teckel, age 8 and full of energy darted through the doggie door. At the porch I felt the air, I love the smell of wet dirt, Juniper trees and Sage brushes. On our gravel driveway I put both dogs in their double leash, the only way Clyde can walk that isn’t in circles.
Our steps were steady, I could hear our paws and feet stepping on the little pebbles of the road. Crunch, crunch, crunch. The dogs next door started barking of jealousy. In one point they were 5 of them. Mad dogs, didn’t let us walk in peace. When finally we passed the dogs, we were able to hear roosters cock-a-doodle-dooing, and horses trotting happy since they canceled the rodeos of the season. Half way through to the mail box, I felt somebody in my back. It was a man. Probably he felt my uneasiness even from the distance and told me: Just going for a walk. He smiled and passed by. I had just finished “Neck, 1990”, the first chapter of I am, I am, I am: Seventeen brushes with death by Maggie O’Farrell, probably not the best book to read during the Covid19 outbreak, but she’s such a good writer. In the first chapter, the author is hiking alone when she encounters a man in the middle of nowhere. I don’t have to tell you that it was a pleasant rendezvous. My mind started to spin 200 miles per hour. I was just feeling his presence on my back, but I couldn’t look back all paranoid, but yes, I was. Mindfulness was not working at all. I had the dogs, I thought. He will be scared of the dogs. Not really. My dogs are pathetic. One can’t see a thing, and the other has a brain smaller than the pebbles we were walking on. I glanced at him pretending I didn’t care. He looked at me and said what he said, and my freaking out moment passed. Seconds later I was watching the silhouette of one very harmless old man balancing around happily in the horizon. No wonder my daughter told me this morning that I needed to chill out.
10:00 pm. Sorry, I got a little bit distracted. My husband arrived, we had supper and just finished watching “Free solo” thanks to the suggestion of a fellow slicer that now I can’t remember. If you happen to have read her slice or are actually her, please let me know, and I will hypelink her post. Thanks for the recommendation. I really enjoyed the documentary. Very well done and up-nerving, like everything in life.
Continuing with “my outside” observation, I have to say that we saw a father with her daughter riding a very tiny bike being dragged by a police dog on a leash. When they crossed us, the dogt almost throw the dad to the ground.We eventually got the mail, we heard some crows crowing, saw 10 cars passing by, five deer roaming, 9 cows ruminating, and our neighbors stopping to say hi from a brown Chevy suburban that I swear it passed twice, or everybody has the same car around here. My dogs found a hole that dug for 20 minutes, and at mile 2, Clyde refused to move. I have to carry him the last stretch home. After 2 hours, we made it back. I did a 2.8 mile outside observation, and I talked like a bird.
Disclaimer: We live in a very remote area. Our land faces BLM land, and we barely see our neighbors. I don’t want anybody to think that I am walking around spreading the COVID19 to my community. Oddly enough, I felt that today it was the most amount of people I have seen since last July on a Friday at 4 pm. Or maybe, it was the normal back from work rush hour.
La Intervencionista from the Deschutes River 