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Tag Archives: dog

Our Queen in Saffron Passes On

26 Tuesday Jun 2018

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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death, dog, friend, gratitude, grief, life, Saffron Queen, sunset

20160904_190005

Voy a fingir que eres tú en una playa de Puerto Rico, aunque solo fue tomada no hace mucho, aquí mismo. Puerto Rico, tu amor. Fotografiando el atardecer. Tu perro te está molestanda. Tu nuevo viaje comienza hoy. Adiós mi amiga, nuestra Reina Azafrán.

Tick-Tock-Clock

03 Sunday Dec 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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clock, dog, grandparents, pre-teen, summer

It was a little home on two floors that smelled of roast beef and carrots and tea brewing in a saucepan, with the faintest whiff of motor oil wafting up from grandpa’s boots at the bottom of the stairs.

I was greeted by a faux-angry dachshund who I wanted to believe loved me and no one else. I got to walk him and sleep with him in the hammock and felt sad that my mother refused to trust or love him.

Spending a week with Mom Mom and Pop Pop alone was a different world than when everyone else was around. I got to choose where I wanted to sleep instead of having to be thrown into the hospital bed in the attic away from all the action, where the grownups were hanging out.  I slept on the couch in my clothes beneath scratchy knitted blankets in black and pink and orange and white. I could hear their enormous pink and white Big Ben ticking all night. If everything was quiet, you could it hear it from any room in the house.  I knew then why people suggest putting tick-tock clocks in with puppies to help them sleep at night.

No alarm clock woke me on those summer mornings. I think it was the sound of her slippered feet scuffing into the kitchen to get breakfast ready for her man, the sound of his razor, the scent of aftershave that woke me.  I’ve been longing for an enormous pink and white tick-tock clock to help me sleep at night. But maybe what I really need is just to write about those nights instead.

Committing The Rare Feel-Good To The World

10 Sunday Sep 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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dog, fight, grateful, happy, journal, naked, ocean, truth, writing

Writing, committing thought and wonder, questions and desire, hope, longing, confession and manifesto leaves one naked. You are naked when you write, and if you’re afraid to let the world see every lovely ugly, then the “enter” key should not be allowed. Hold fast your pen, keep your files hidden. Wait until you’re ready to slam it all down, unlock your door, let the stranger in to see you emerge from your bath, wet, bloody, home, and real.

I’m not writing so the stranger can rate me on some fixed scale like exhausted figure skaters or boxers who throw their fights walking away with millions.  I’m not writing for your approval or to raise eyebrows or cause trouble or to make history.  I am writing because, as a wise man said what seems so long ago, I can’t not write. It’s a driven and it’s a given that I will have pen juice on my fingers, that I stare long and lovingly at journals in the bookstore and have a hard time not buying binders and loose-leaf like some kind of kid going back to school. I love the smell of pen and ink and this laptop hardly creates the same kind of vibe, but that’s all right.

September has come and somebody turned the cicada’s song switch off: their voices are gone. The north wind brings a scent of flowers which I cannot explain. A hurricane comes and I am tired of figuring out which way to run. I colored my hair and bathed late, very late last night, and I wonder if my neighbors heard the water running.  My hair is clean and smooth and fragrant. I woke smelling its scent on my pillow feeling more content, happy, and pleased than I have in a long time. The moon is full and bright in my bedroom window again, which tells me what season we are in. I slept with the windows open beneath piles of covers so I can be warm and still hear the wind in the trees. I think your name and I can smile and write it in the sand, I can even allow you in my bed as I coax sleep once more, instead of fighting, fighting, fighting you, waking feeling like every little thing’s gonna be all right.

This morning’s beach is scoured clean by north/northeast winds, maybe 10 knots. Small, round rocks perfect for skimming peek out from the sand and I see no crab burrows.  A large, dead fish. It looks like something began to devour him and spat him back out, leaving his body on shore. Why?  A dead turtle, a kind I do not recognize, his small clawed limbs point southwest. I am sorry he died and hope it wasn’t because of plastic.  A black dog running wild on the beach that for some reason, no reason, for lack of anything I can explain, I do not trust him. Sea glass seems extinct since the beach restoration, but I found a little bit of blue and white ceramic that I put in my pocket.  On the final few feet back to my trail, I found a piece of shell the size of two fingers. She is deep blush-colored on the outside, and mother-of-pearl within, and she looks like how I feel when I hear his name.

I feel alive and well and ready to write. I feel grateful for everything that brought me here, what good, bad, strange, and otherwise. Time to commit the rest to paper and ink.

Morning Musings

19 Wednesday Apr 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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birds, dog, Mermaids, morning, neighbor, ocean, sunrise, thoughts, words

I hadn’t planned on waking with a jolt, but it happens sometimes. I open my eyes to a bright flash, like lightning, but there is no storm here.  Sunrise soon, so I slip into slouchy clothes, add another jacket because the winds are northeast, and you know what that means.  The dog walkers were out trying to be quiet, but their fluffies have one job and they are going to do that job every morning: yip at anything that moves, and that’s okay. By now most of them know I’m not bite-worthy, so they let me scritch their wiry necks and set them on their way.

I stand in the sand with camera phone in hand waiting for the molten orb to rise from the Atlantic, noting the ceiling covered by rows of narrow clouds, adjoined, pink, soon to be yellow then white when the whole thing is done.  I watch the fluffies trot across wind-blown dunes. I see early crab tracks and wonder if they’re sorry they got up too soon.  In the west, a pillar of rainbow over the Hampton bridge.

The laughing gulls were quiet for most of the year, but now that the “skimmer” gulls have arrived, the laughing gulls call constantly. Laughing gulls are more likely to share the breakwaters with the fuller-bodied gulls or tiny plovers who are no threat to anyone.   The skimmers fly by in the mornings but do most of their work of feeding in the evenings, skimming the tideline open-mouthed and faster than a white feathered bullet. Their morning calls are demure compared to the coarse laughing gulls, their bodies are the epitome of sleek, narrow, curved, pale, and far more seasonal. They are white silk arrows flown from heaven, and that seems to piss off the laughing gulls.

There is a tiny bird perched on the dead tree limb outside my window, breast curved and deep. He silently pivots like an unsure weather vane. What is he looking for?

My neighbor says goodbye to her cat on the windowsill every morning; she doesn’t know I see this, and she greets him when she returns before she opens the door.  I met her across the balcony this morning. I said hello, and she “confessed” her ritual. I think she felt like she was caught like a deer in the headlights.  We haven’t spoken but a few words.  I told her, “You should see him when you’re not home. All the parties. Had to call the cops a few times.” one-two-three…. She had no idea what I was talking about, but eventually she smiled and said, “You’re funny, ” and I wished her a great day as she smiled and made her way down the stairs.

Mad Libs was a fun game, and sometimes Jimmy Fallon, the late show host, fills out a Mad Libs form and acts out a scene based on the guests’ words.  I’ve watched Jimmy coax a great many words from his guests, and most of them disappoint me. They’re like me, trying to remember what’s a noun, verb, adjective. Most guest replies are often bland like a primary color wheel, and it informs me more deeply than a silly interview.  This morning I am pleased with Kevin Spacey who, unsurprisingly, immediately, chose wonderful and interesting words.  This matters to me, not so much because I want to win a date with Kevin Spacey, but more because it reaffirms my need for more, my need to be in the company of people who are curious about the world, who know things that I do not. Those who touch the mermaid of me.

Love, Canine.

03 Monday Apr 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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death, dog

We lost Nikki last week, and when I say “we” I mean my neighbor who she belonged to, and me.  I had the privilege of getting to know Nikki for a year. Who couldn’t fall in love with a little dog long as a dachshund but colored by hound?  I had the honor of babysitting Nikki for quite some time, and we bonded as I bathed her every day to rid her of fleas.  Nikki was an older girl who saw her share of physical misery, and while she stayed with me, I pampered her to pieces and she loved me back as only a dog can, keeping my feet warm on the couch while I read–or dozed.

I can feel the folds of her soft skin in my hands as I bathed her. I can smell her body as she became cleaner every day from the flea wounds.  I fastidiously cleaned my floor and any surface she touched because her flea wounds bled everywhere, but that was all right.  I only wanted her to heal and feel better.   I bought her treats and walked her and wished she were mine (only a little) knowing her owner would come back for her in time.

I bonded with Nikki on our walks, with food, with baths, and our naps.  I can still feel the folds of her skin in my hands as I bathed and petted her, and I miss this sweet little lady. I got attached.  I am haunted by my Lexie who I lost, again.  Many of our neighbors on this spit of land have lost their fur children recently, and the loss is palpable to us all.

Sometimes it seems like there is no candle big enough, no light strong or great enough, to offset the grief.  I got attached and I am grieving with my neighbor, and for me, and I wonder what it says when we hurt more for our four-legged friends than when we lose the two-legged ones.20160916_111230

Gifts From Pain

26 Saturday Nov 2016

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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death, dog, pain, rain, sorting

Somewhere out there a red doberman’s bones rest in the deep woods. He lies beneath the mouldy-scented earth made from ancient maples, oaks, and silt from the overflowing creek.  His master put a bullet in his brain and buried him there. Last night I wondered if he leashed him to a tree to do the deed?  I wondered why he taught his dogs to taunt and terrify a caged raccoon, how could this sport be justified?  My father held me while I cried so hard. And then I wondered why he came to my father’s funeral when he assured us he would not because he does not attend those kinds of things. Yet in he walked with them, the aged Con-Ed gang, fugitives from a ghost gallery, clinging together, this group of men whose names I heard all my life. I wonder if he remembers his dog in the middle of the night.

The whales came early and the wind has returned. Ten knots and rising.  The rain is apparent on the roof. Sunrise two hours ahead.  I played with a black doberman and his buddy the red on the beach today, then I lay in bed for hours tonight curled in a ball waiting for the pain to stop, then suddenly asked myself what kind of dignified woman just lies there and takes it? How is lying there hoping the pain will stop anytime now wise or mature, like it’s my job and responsibility to suffer? Or all those nights I couldn’t breathe, stubborn in the belief that me and my clogged bronchi would fight through it without need of a chemical and everything would be just fine. I mean, oxygen isn’t that important for good sleep, am I right?  I have a right to breathe, and I have a right to sleep without pain. (Oh, and the list doesn’t end there.)  Tonight I couldn’t sleep thinking about dignity, the first time I heard that word and what it means to me now. It’s hard to sleep when the walls are breaking, when the past is shedding, flowing away into a cold, rainy, beautiful night, so I got up to write.

Somewhere out there a broken bone is mending, the body sleeps in a cozy and needed bed of opiate. I asked him to feed his mind/body/soul with all good things for healing. He hears me in a fuzzy kind of way, and I know the rest is up to him. I wonder when he will hear the word dignity and truly heed its meaning and make it his own.  It’s not a despairing kind of wonder, because I know it will fall on him the way things fall on me in the middle of the night. So. I will take two Tylenol, my own advice, then see what kind of day I will make for me. Damn that wind is high.

Mako and Sunrise

19 Saturday Nov 2016

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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death, dog, Mako, sunrise

Time changes definitely influence my get out of bed schedule.  I sleep on my side, look out the window, see the subtle notes in the sky which you cannot ignore that says night is done and dawn approaches. It’s all over, whether you slept or not, here it comes.  Because of the “pruning” efforts of our realtor, there are fewer birds here who herald the dawn.  I recall hearing early peepings last year and asked why why why.   I miss them now.  With the time change the sun dips its morning hand into my room earlier and stirs me over like an ingredient in an orange glass bowl:  Get turned over whether you like it or not, this is where you’re headed.  I am headed into the sunrise bowl now made of soft blue, lavender, pale gold.  I put on a couple of layers and walk down to the beach, hoping the cat I babysit  won’t wreck the house while I’m gone.   I walk past bunches of umber seaweed that are unbeautiful knowing if it were July they’d already be shriveled, buried in the sand and blown away by now. It’s been a low tide morning each day with the moon behind me, her light as conversational as it is in my 3 AM bedroom.  The low tide leavings show me little stones that look like walnut meats, something  you could put in a brownie batter.   I stopped my walk short because B was there.  I am not comfortable seeing him right now and maybe he feels the same way, shown by the way he exited to the path back to his apartment as I approached that little bit of beach.

B is a fixture here, morning and night. His life is storied and fascinating, but one that I am not at liberty to share here. One thing I can tell you is that his best friend and brother was Mako, his Bernese mountain dog.  Mako was the mayor of Willoughby Spit. Mako left us earlier this week, and  I can still feel his heavy body laying on my legs, rolled over, wanting love and a treat.  Who doesn’t remember seeing Mike and Mako walking the Spit those early mornings, looking for sea glass?   Everybody knows Mako and B in their own way.  He was the benevolent mayor of the Spit, and his loss is ours, this gentle giant.  I walked the Spit this morning and saw B alone and wondered what he was thinking, how he was feeling. It’s not much of a stretch.  I don’t want to project how he feels right now because it’s not my place to suppose how a man feels when his best friend is gone, but I have a good idea that it’s as raw and wounded as the day I had to put my Lexie down. Perhaps he feels relief that his companion is no longer suffering and knows he will always be at his side when he walks down the dune trail to our bay.   My prayers and hopes are with B and Mako, and everyone whose life they touched.  Mahalo, and sunrise.

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