A stretch of river LVIII: Scruffy Hears a Whom; or, About a Small Amount of Words. A Shaggy-Dog Fragment

Your correspondent (disguised as a very casually-dressed Kubla Khan) and his faithful companion watching where Ark the sacred river ran on our evening walk a couple of years ago. Taken by the Mrs.

Back in the spring, I listened to a recording of a 2005 reading by Billy Collins, and after reading "The Revenant," he said, in so many words, that it's surprising to learn that dogs are the poetry-writers, that you'd think it would be the cats who did that sort of thing. On our morning walk a couple days later, something about Scruffy's sniffing combined with Collins' observation and my musing over how language seems to be changing especially rapidly, and that led to what you'll read below. I wrote it out in long-hand while tutoring, then put it aside and almost immediately forgot it until, yesterday, I ran across it again while going through some old papers.

It's a fragment--just like "Kubla Khan." ("Just like." Uh-huh.) It has no real beginning; I know where it wants to go, but I don't like that direction. But some of what's here, I kinda like, and that's why you're reading this . . . or will, if you dare to go below the fold.

Something more of substance to come in the next few days.

Me: So: here we are at the grave of Whom.

Scruffy: Who?

Me: Whom. Whom is the object of our being here.

Scruffy: How did Whom die?

Me: Hardly anyone uses it in print anymore. People who should know better--journalists; other, I assume, educated people--just don't use it. They use who in its place. It's really rare these days to see whom used properly, even in a mainstream publication.

Scruffy: Death by neglect. A sad thing.

Me: Yessir. Oh--over there is Generic He's grave. I met him way back in the early '70s, when I was just starting to learn grammar. He looked so healthy then--you'd never have guessed he'd have only about ten years to live. All those years ago . . .

Scruffy: Never knew him. He was long before my time. Were you two close?

Me: Well, no, not really. It's not sadness I feel. It just feels weird to see their in his old place. Language changes, you know? It's a fact of life. I get that. But it usually changes slowly. Over years. So when you can bear witness to its changing within your own lifetime, well . . .

Scruffy: Wait. You said its. Twice.

Me: Yeah. So?

Scruffy: Which its? With or without the apostrophe?

Me: One with, one without. And thanks for reminding me--I do believe that's the Apostrophe's grave they're digging over there.

Scruffy: Death by neglect again?

Me: Nope. Abuse this time. Using it when not needed, not using it when needed. Uncertainty all around about how to use it. I once received a paper from a student with it's' in it. I guess he was just trying to be sure.

Scruffy: Hmmm.

Me: One of these days, Im afraid, people will decide theyre too much trouble and just leave them out entirely. Readersll figure out what were saying, theyll say.

Scruffy: Like leaving a de-clawed cat outside all the time. Heh heh.

Me: Don't be cruel. It'll be more like leaving an inside dog out in the snow.

Scruffy: That's cold.

Me: Ironic, isn't it: Apostrophes exist because written English exists; thanks to the Internet and the growth of knowledge as a commodity, more of us write more than we would otherwise, and so more people forget or misuse apostrophes more often than ever before.

Scruffy: Is that really irony?

Me: Yeah, I really do think--even though its mausoleum is over there on that little rise.

Scruffy: When did that go in?

Me: Can't you tell? The asymmetrical façade? The off-horizontal rooflines? Late '90s or early '00s.

Scruffy: Well. If I may, I'd like to say that it was premature to entomb Irony. I mean, here we are, a dog and his owner, talking about language. Absurd. And absurdity is at least a half-sibling of irony, their common parent being incongruity.

Me: Correct you are, Scruffy, in this as in so many things. But that's assuming, of course, that Congruity is still around.

Scruffy: Yeah, well, right now the only congruity I care about is that you remember to give me my treat when we get home.

Me: The warp and woof of your world is not especially expansive, is it?

Scruffy: No--but it helps with the congruity thing. Woof in particular.

Me: Pun intended?

Scruffy: You're asking a dog that question?

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A stretch of river LI: In which the Meridian and Scruffy witness something that might as well have occurred on a planet in a galaxy far, far away

Image found here.

Picture, if you will, an early-fall afternoon, the sun slanting goldenly, gloriously through the just-turning leaves of the walnuts and cottonwoods of the northeast corner of Riverside Park. Picture, further, an open space in those trees measuring, oh, a hundred yards in length by 50 or so yards wide, bounded on three sides by the trees and on the fourth by a road which follows the bend in the Little Arkansas. Between that road and the river there's a sidewalk, and it's along that way that Scruffy and I stroll as we trace the perimeter of the park in the afternoons.

On that above-mentioned early-fall afternoon in that open space, Scruffy and I see something that makes us stop and watch for a while. It is a man and his two golden retrievers. The retrievers are not on leashes. They lope about happily in the open space. Their coats gleam just as goldenly as the light that shines on them. The man has with him a toy that resembles a cylindrically-shaped, very well-fed squirrel. He throws it a fair distance (it must be weighted) and one dog fetches it and brings it to him while the other watches in that happy/dumb look bred into all golden retrievers.

The retrievers, their tongues lolling, seem to lope in slow motion, they move so fluidly, the light moving across their coats like liquid.

The light sort of lands with a dull thud on Scruffy.

They are not on leashes.

Scruffy is on a leash; his owner holds its loop in a death-grip. Scruffy looks at them and at me and at them and at me, wistfully, as if to say, "They are not on leashes."

The retrievers return to their owner when he calls them. "Calls them"--not "shouts at them" or "runs after them" or "bribes them with liver treats" or "turns and walks back home, hoping that they'll feel abandoned and follow him home out of fear."

(Now the reader has some insight into why Scruffy is on a leash.)

They do not dawdle or cower when called: they lope that easy lope of theirs up to their owner, their tails wagging.

"You see that magical space, that enchanted glade over there, Scruffy?" I say. "That there is Planet Obedient Dog."

Now it is my turn to look wistfully over there.

"We may never ever get to visit there. But, you know, it's nice to dream we might some day. One small step for a man and his dog . . . "

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In which "Scruffy" pulls a character-fatwah on his owner

Salman Rushdie, Master of Disguise, dons a keffiyeh-like bandanna to throw would-be assassins off his scent.

I assure you: I had no idea.

"It is like a bad comedy. My relations with the protection officers were cordial and I am still friendly with a few of them. At the end of my nine years of protection they held a reception for me. I had a lot of sympathy and understanding from the police. Our relationship was the exact opposite of what has been written. I never heard myself called by the name Scruffy in nine years." (Emphasis added so as to impress upon my reader my shock upon reading this.

You think you know your dog, and then he goes around to the press and makes up stuff like this.

I fed him Science Diet!!! He took nightly treats from me without cutting me in on royalties to boot.

Oh--and: It's not been any nine years, either, that liar, though it certainly has felt like it, trailing after him, cleaning up his literal and figurative messes, scratching behind his ears when he lays his head on my lap, giving him his flea treatments, bathing him . . .

(Yeah: I never suspected. He was that good.)

And to think I not only bought The Satanic Verses in solidarity with his plight but actually tried to read the thing. He hides out with me, doesn't let on and doesn't let on . . .

Ingrate.

(If you're confused, go here. Hat-tip: Imani)

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A stretch of river XLIV: Scruffy as Ishmael

Scruffy longs for ice.

"Call him Scruffy--I do. On several occasions this winter--never mind how many; I've lost count--having no money whatsoever in his purse, and nothing particular (aside from his leash) to interest him in staying on the banks of the Little Arkansas, he thinks on occasion he will suddenly lunge forth when there is ice on the river and visit our small watery-but-frozen part of the world."--from a (very very) false start by Herman Melville.

Now: Scruffy being some sort of terrier mix, you'd think water would be something of an antithesis to his nature. But the elements don't stand in opposition to each other--and, after all, ice is water's version of earth, sort of, if you squint just right and haven't had your coffee yet.

Or maybe one doesn't have to squint too hard after all. Have a look at some more of Melville's (very very) false start on his great whaling book, when the author was uncertain whether to make the narrator the very thing he himself would wind up hunting:

Etymology
(Supplied by a middle-aged Instructor in English)

"While you take in hand to school others, and to teach them how "Scruffy" is to be called in our tongue, leaving out, through ignorance, the letter C pronounced hard, which almost alone maketh up the signification of the word, you deliver that which is not true." --Middle-aged Instructor in English.

scruff·y (skrŭf'ē) adj. (scruff·i·er, scruff·i·est) 1. Shabby; untidy. 2. Chiefly British Scaly; scabby. [From obsolete scruff, "scurf," variant of scurf; see scurf.]

*****

scurf /skɜrf/ –noun 1. the scales or small shreds of epidermis that are continually exfoliated from the skin. 2. any scaly matter or incrustation on a surface. [Origin: bef. 1000; ME, OE < ON skurfa scurf, crust]

"Any scaly matter or incrustation on a surface," eh? Like ice, perhaps? Scruffy's abrupt strains on the leash are analogous to what Ishmael sees in the "story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. . . . It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life . . ." Scruffy sees himself (figuratively speaking, of course) in the ice? Crust you are, and to crust you shall return?

The saner among you will think about all this much like Starbuck does as he confronts Ahab on the quarter-deck of the Pequod: you too will think Scruffy "a dumb brute" and thus see this as silliness at best. You'd be entitled, too. All I know is this: This dog is obsessed with river-ice in a way he is not when the water is ice-free. As much time as I spend with this animal, as well as I know him, he remains, in many ways--and perhaps ultimately--as inscrutable as the White Whale.

It's weird, is all I'm saying.

Nay: it tasks me. It is a mask to strike beyond.

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A stretch of river XXXVI: On good old Corot, and Places to Go

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Ville-d'Avray, 1870

It's a misty, grey morning here in Wichita, and/but today there is something about today's light that reminds me of the Corot that hangs at the Nelson-Atkins (NB: the one you see here hangs in the Met but is quite similar in terms of both the scene depicted and, in particular, the quality of its light). Over the years, I've grown more and more appreciative of the Nelson's collection of 19th-century French paintings--it's taught me, for example, that Pisarro's work, more than others', is better appreciated in person. Even so--even though I know those other painters are "better"--it's the Corot I linger and linger in front of, every visit, and for the same reason I wanted to linger this morning and gaze across the river even as Scruffy wanted to chase the squirrel on the fence--a dog's catnip--separating the path from the apartment's pool: not anything remarkable in the scene itself, but the pearlescence of the light illuminating it--no, more like glazing it.

John Berger, whose socialist's sense that art and its appreciation can and should be something that you don't have to wear black and stroke your chin significantly in order to do, writes about Corot with a combination of, on the one hand, disappointment in what Corot might have accomplished but chose not to and, on the other, the value in what he most assuredly does accomplish, for me at least, whenever I stand in front of that landscape in Kansas City:

Corot remained a petit-bourgeois. Matching, pinning, sewing, he was never quite able to shake off the effect of his father's drapery business and his mother's dress-shop.

[snip]

[But h]e was a petit-bourgeois only in his refusal to speculate on how the world could be changed. This explains why he was timid without being a coward. Instead of questioning, he set out to make his own peace, to avoid all contradictions. He knew it himself: 'Delacroix is an eagle and I'm only a lark. I sing little songs in my grey clouds.' He reveals it unconsciously when he says: 'Charity is a still more beautiful thing than talent. Besides, one benefits the other. If you have a kind heart, your work will show it.' How comfortably without contradictions that 'Besides' is!

[snip]

Corot was a lovable man. At his best he was an artist of minor genius, comparable to, say, Manet. And let me add--with the due modesty that ought to precede such a statement--that Corot has contributed to many people's happiness. (208-209)

Yes indeed. The Nelson's Van Goghs, the early (and late) Monets, the Manet, they challenge me in various ways with their assertiveness. The Corot "just" makes me happy.

In the meantime, though, Scruffy is tugging at his leash . . . which brings me to the "Places to Go" part of this post. We're on the cusp of finals week here, which means that I can't say when my next post here will appear. So, below the fold, I want to recommend some places worth your visits--assuming, that is, that you have plenty of time, as several of these places will require that of you.

(Aside: I can't decide just now, as the duties of finals week command my attention, whether the blog is analogous to Corot or to the squirrel Scruffy wants to chase. Both are pleasurable, so that doesn't enter into deciding.)

Anyway:

For better or for worse, many of the blogs I visit are kept by people with lots of things to say and who are not shy about taking their time in saying them. I'm as appreciative of the pithy observation as the next guy, but I know as well that some things simply take a longer time to say in order to say them well . . . and I am just as appreciative of that.

Gawain of Heaven Tree, whose blog's post's leisurely pace on leisurely subjects exudes "Man of Leisure," has a wonderful post on one of my very favorite American painters, John Singer Sargent, that is ostensibly about an exhibition of Sargent's paintings done in Venice or on Venetian subjects currently on exhibit in Venice. But it turns into, as well, meditations on technique, on seeking out the proper viewing distance for paintings, "and, as always, love." Reading it, it occurred to me that I like Sargent for the same reason I like Corot: he makes me happy.

Gawain meditates; Hank of A Lake County Point of View does not meditate so much as forays. Hank writes like he's in a hurry, but you can't be when you read him. The title of his most recent post, "Lupins, Wolves, Chinese Romans, Peaches and the Unforgettable Cream," does not quite cover everything that he ends up writing on. It starts out as simple homesickness for Texas Bluebonnets, which, I can attest to, are especially abundant this spring and so are deserving of being homesick over; like Proust's madeleine, though, that homesickness leads to, um, all sorts of other things, places, people, across time and space and cultures. Fully referenced and complete with footnotes-within-footnotes (which are as much a part of the show as the rest of the post and thus are not to be missed), reading this post (and others . . . it's interesting how the color blue seems to inspire these posts of his . . . ) is like reading some hyper-texted cross of Montaigne, the afore-mentioned Proust, David Foster Wallace, and a coy Henry Miller. No one else I've yet run across is doing what Hank is doing--which is a very good thing, seeing as I have enough to read as it is . . . but sad in its way, too.

Also: I gotta get me some sort of footnotes-within-footnotes hack for Blogger . . . or move to Typepad . . .

Hank's longer posts are strange knowledge-maps that reveal the sometimes-odd and -unexpected interconnectedness of things; in a recent post, though, Conrad of Varieties of Unreligious Experience writes about another kind of map: ones all but unreadable except by the person who made it. We tend to think of maps as being objective visual descriptions of places that anyone is able to use with success. But these maps are expressions of a kind of knowledge, as I noted in comments over there, that cannot be taught but only learned.

My long-time blogging compadre Raminagrobis, over at his eponymously-named blog, has up "In Praise of Bathos," a patient discussion of meter and its connection to whatever "bad poetry" might be.

Finally, Randall of Musings from the Hinterland has initiated what this reader, at least, fervently hopes will be an ongoing series called "You Be the Jury" (a more interactive take on The People's Court--or like a "Take Your Blog's Audience to Court" kind of thing). Judging from this first installment, it promises to be both a celebration of the Weird Stuff that People Sue Over and the extent to which the law helps (or hinders) us in thinking about said Weird Stuff.

Still not enough? Then be sure to have a look at the other folks in the "Daily (B)reads" section of the right gutter. They too are worthy of your attention.

As always, thanks for visiting and reading and deigning to come back every once in a while. I'll see you around.

UPDATE: As a bonus to those of you who read this far, I give you the (two) last word(s) in gloriously-vulgar but dead-on movie reviewing, Neil Cumpston.

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