Monthly Archives: May 2013

May 27, 2013 — I sat on my front porch a few days ago when a big rabbit hopped onto the lawn, came right up to the flower bed in front of the porch, looked straight at me, whereupon I said, “Hello, Bunny,” and then the rabbit casually proceeded to eat the clover. One bold bunny, especially with all the loose dogs and cats in the neighborhood.

I have been Wallie-sitting recently for my friends’ white bichonpoo, Wallie, on two separate long weekends.

When Wallie arrives, he comes with his bag packed with dog food, an array of toys and his little bed. I immediately take out all the toys and toss them around the living room floor. He then carries them upstairs, one-by-one, and that’s where they stay, because that’s where I stay, mostly. He has a knack for matching toy color to rug color, so inevitably I step on them. One night I went rushing up to him, to hug him lying on the couch in the dark – “Wallie, Wallie” – SQUEAK – “what a sweet boy.” Only one of his toys squeaks, thankfully.

Upon his arrival on his first visit, he set up a command post at the top of the stairs, surrounded by his toys, and where, through the window of the front door below, he could reconnoiter the neighborhood and the return of his owners.

I talk to him to tell him what’s going on and what I’m doing; it’s nice to have someone to talk to other than myself; we go for walks where he encounters the chocolate lab, Willa, and they play chase on opposite sides of her fence.

Soon after Wallie arrived the other day for his second visit, I took him, on his long leash, out into the backyard. Instantly he picked up the scent: “Bunny! Bunny! Bunny! BUNNY!” he said, nose to the ground tracking the bunny first to under the hedge and then to the rabbit hole beneath my shed.

There we faced a dilemma: “That’s where the bunny lives,” I said. “I can’t fit down there,” he declared. He looked up at me: “Now what are we gonna do?” He tried every way to figure out how to get to the bunny, until I distracted him.

Once, when it was time to take Wallie out, it was raining. I let him out, on his long leash hooked to his harness, just to the bottom of the back steps so he could piddle while I waited at the top, inside. When he came in he kept trying to shake off the spritz of rain on his coat. I got a small towel and told him to come. “Oh, no, not me,” he said, and stubbornly refused to budge. I used my deep, authoritative voice, “Come!” “Nope,” he said, “I don’t know WHAT color that cape-looking thing is that you’re waving, but I’m not coming.” I had to go to him and dry him off. He loved the massage and felt so much better afterwards, he raced around the house for a minute.

I wanted to know more about this addictively lovable crossbreed, so I researched bichonpoos, sometimes known as poochons. We’re not totally sure what Wallie is, because he is a rescue dog. About the size of a miniature poodle, he certainly exhibits all characteristics of Bichon Frisés and poodles – smart, mellow, energetic, chicken-lover, and this which I read online: “Both are susceptible to small dog syndrome, whereby a dog attempts to become pack leader of its human owners, so care must be taken to establish dominance.” Taking care, it took him no time to establish dominance.

I have trouble remembering the name of the Bichon Frisé breed because, after my years of studying ballet, I get that name confused with the most difficult to master ballet step, brisé volé, without getting your feet tangled mid-leap and falling derriere over dog biscuits.

Here is a good demonstration of the brisé volé if you’re interested in seeing the execution of that step: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpKLTk_J1Dk. This is the Kirov Mariinsky Ballet in 1999, the “Bluebird” Pas de Deux from The Sleeping Beauty, performed by Andrei Batalov and Svetlana Ivanova. Andrei Batalov is considered one of the greatest male ballet dancers ever, and his performance here of this “Bluebird” Pas de Deux, 5:15 minutes into the video for the brisé volés, is one of the best Bluebirds I have seen. Ah, but I have danced into the wings chasing rabbits. Back to Wallie-dog.

A friend, a dog-lover who owns a blue heeler rescue dog, called me a woman of gold for taking care of Wallie. Now, “Woman of Gold” found a tennis ball for Wallie. I bounced it down the steps, he chased it, brought it back upstairs, stubbornly refused to share it, rolled it away, picked it up, tossed it into the air, caught it, played with it at the top of the staircase until — it disappeared. It rolled away from him and fell through the space between the balusters, landing in the hall below. Wallie sat there: “Hmmm….” Woman of Gold had to retrieve it. Then Wallie came downstairs. WoG bounced the ball in place while Wallie ran into the other room to see where it went. He finally figured it out. I tossed it halfway up the stairs where it bounced and he grabbed it mid-flight and took it back upstairs with him. Then he went and chewed on his synthetic bone.

The last time he visited here, he was ASTONISHED to encounter the dog that looked just like him in the long mirror. He stood nonplused, spellbound momentarily and then went on his way, refusing to look at that other dog again. This visit, though, he did use the long mirror to see me, sitting across the room, but did not once look at that other dog.

I laid a fleece blanket on a cushion of the sofa in my studio. So, he can relax near me when I sit at my computer desk, or right up against me when I sit on the sofa to read or watch a movie on my computer. We watched Django Unchained the other night. Like WoG does during some movies, Wallie slept through it but for the part where the dogs barked that captured his attention.

He loves to have his coat brushed and it’s a good bonding measure for the two of us. But I spoiled him royally when I took him up on my bed with me while I watched three hour-long series pieces on Sunday night PBS. I couldn’t just leave him on the floor alone. Later, when I sat on my bed and turned on the TV to catch a moment of news, out of the corner of my eye I saw this white fluffy thing pop up, fleetingly, above the edge of the bed, grab the edge of the mattress with his forepaws, slip off and crash land. Too short to jump up, fortunately for me. Once I turn off the TV he knows it’s time to go to sleep, and he is fine. He’s a very smart dog. Show him something once, he pays attention and he remembers.

Sometimes we just relax and sit out on the porch together, surveying the neighborhood. It’s a pleasant way to pass time with a companion.

Ultimately, Wallie’s owner came to pick him up, and although Wallie greeted me happily when he arrived, on seeing his owner he was so ecstatic, he forgot to say goodbye.

Quiet. The house is empty without him. I miss my little buddy. But, he’ll be back for a ten-day visit in June.

—Samantha Mozart

May 8, 2013 — I enter my blog and sit at my big oak round table, alone. Moriarty pads in and sets an empty wine bottle cloaked in multi-colored wax drippings, remembrances of candles past, in the center of the table. He places a fresh candle, orange, in the neck, pressing it down and twisting it a bit making sure it is firmly affixed. “The flames never stop burning,” he says. Then he places a small clock on the table. The hands are missing. I look at him. The Phantom of My Blog is an enigmatic creature.

“Where’ve you been?” he says. “You haven’t been at your blog in a while.” His hair is disheveled. He looks like he’s just spent an hour in conversation with Dexter Filkins and Charlie Rose, similar hairstyles, looking like they’ve just arisen from an afternoon nap at the last minute, rushed to the studio and forgotten to brush their hair.

“You’re staring at me,” he says. “Where were you?”

“Contemplating your hair,” I reply.

“No, while you were gone; where were you?” He sits down.

“I’ve been sleeping a lot lately and I feel like, well, chicken soup – liquidy. I don’t even know what that means, but it fits; and tired. My head feels heavier than my body, which is saying something, and too thick to get thoughts out of. Allergies, I suppose. I am going to make some chicken soup once I get done here at my blog.

“My friend Susan* wrote about her experiences climbing Kilimanjaro and I was lying in bed reading it,” I go on.

“I already made the soup,” Moriarty says. “I anticipated you might want it. It’s got carrots and onions and fresh ginger in it, besides other stuff. I’ll go heat some up for us.” He pushes back his chair and disappears into the kitchen.

He returns with two steaming bowls of soup, placing them on the table before us. He lights the candle.

I begin telling him of my experiences the past few weeks. He pulls out a large, brightly colored foil bag and begins crackling it to open it. It is annoying. I stop talking.

“Creggies,” he declares. “Crunchy veggie pieces for our soup.” I wait while he gets the bag open. I am getting a headache. He offers me the bag. I scoop some out with my fingers and drop them into my soup – bright, colorful pieces; they are good.

“O, maid of beauteous tresses, and eyes of soft caresses, your glance is all beguiling and your lips are ever smiling….” He sings. “Ketèlbey, ‘In the Mystic Land of Egypt,’” he says. “It’s on your playlist, number 30. Let us float together, forever and forever, to some far distant isle, a-down the mystic Nile.”

“I love that piece,” I say. “It’s so-o-o British Imperialist pomp. A whole movie runs through that music. It’s like watching a Pathé newsreel of the British parading through their conquests. One could write a thick novel about just the British comings and goings in Egypt. It could start with Napoleon who snapped British eyes wide open in 1798, when he defeated the Marmeluke Army at the Battle of the Pyramids, to the importance of controlling Egypt as means to protect their precious India.”

“That story would be never ending,” Moriarty postulates. “It’s all interconnected. And it’s impermanent. It seems beginingless. Relative to your last post, written before your head got funny, Tamerlane invaded Syria, defeating the Marmeluke Army in the Battle of Aleppo on October 30, 1400. He sacked Aleppo and Damascus. Marmeluke is said to be an Arabic designation for slaves. Just call me Marmeluke. Want more soup?”

“You’re not,” I say. “A slave; you’re not. Anyhow, how could you be a slave when you’re a phantom? A phantom slave wouldn’t be of much use to anyone, I should think.”

He crackles open the foil again, tilts the bag and dumps more Creggies into his soup. “Little boats,” he describes, “floating down the soup, past the beguiling carrots, carrying exotic ginger spice.

“I like the kiss scene,” he goes on, sailing into the next port of thought, “the mother’s kiss. While you’ve been in bed climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, I’ve been reading Swann’s Way, Marcel Proust. He wrote it in 1913. So, as this year marks the hundredth anniversary. I thought I would read it – volume one of In Search of Lost Time. The young boy has to go up to his room to bed early without kissing his mother goodnight because she is hosting a dinner party for an important guest. He agonizes over the separation and its coming duration spanning across the long, deep night until morning. She will not come up to his room to kiss him later. He gazes out at her and the dinner party guests from his window. How can he reach her? He contrives to write her a note and send it to her at table through a servant. Once she reads the words poured from his heart, she will come. The servant delivers the note. The mother reads it. She never comes.”

“Why do you like that?” I ask him. “It’s sad. It makes me cry.”

“Because it’s true,” he says. “It’s how life happens.”

“Therefore, by virtue of it’s being true, it is also false,” I add.

“Sometimes it is what it is….”

“Well, I like Proust,” I reply. “His long sentences and flowing rhythms are easy to acclimate to. Most people don’t want to read that kind of deep, thoughtfully dense writing these days. They want their reading served in colorful little pieces, like watching a TV show splattered with commercials every six minutes. It takes patience to read writing styled like Proust’s – a luxurious indulgence in patience.”

“Anyway, how can you search for and find lost time when time doesn’t exist?” he asks.

“What?” I look up from my soup. My head feels lighter and the headache has retreated. I wipe my chin with the paper napkin he has provided.

“Well, look,” he says, waving his napkin around in large aerial circles, attempting to enlighten me of his thought. Suddenly he finds himself waving a flaming torch. The napkin has caught fire in the candle flame. He sinks it in the remains of his soup.

“At bottom,” he says, “there is no mechanistic physical foundation for the cosmos, implied by the quantum theory. None of this exists. None of that happened. The universe closes in on itself, reversing what was just there, destroying it. What is created is uncreated, micro and macro entangle, macro destroying micro: the issue of decoherence.”

“So, then,” I ruminate, “what if the history we just spoke of is all humanity’s mass-minded perception? And what is humanity? How does quantum theory apply to consciousness, as well as to matter?”

“They are two complementary aspects of one reality. Observe,” he says. “No experience takes place outside of consciousness. If something exists outside of consciousness, we won’t know it.”

“Mystical,” I muse.

“The mysterious edge,” he says, “where micro processes are transformed into macro processes.

“I read a scientific paper** on this,” he explains. “Make a footnote at the end of our conversation, so our many followers will know if I interpreted it correctly. They may have some enlightening thoughts on this issue, the wholeness perspective of the Theory of Everything.”

We arise from the table. He pinches out the candle flame. Smoke rises from the extinguished flame in entangled spirals; further up the spiral, it dissipates. In the kitchen together, we wash the bowls and utensils. Together we exit my blog, going our separate ways into the night. We have left the blog empty, ready for the next reader to react and act upon it.

—Samantha Mozart
with Moriarty

*Susan Scott: “In Praise of Lilith, Eve & the Serpent in the Garden of Eden,” available by clicking on the icon here in the right sidebar.

**Journal of Cosmology, 2011, Vol. 14. JournalofCosmology.com, 2011. How Consciousness Becomes the Physical Universe. Menas Kafatos, Ph.D., Rudolph E. Tanzi, Ph.D., and Deepak Chopra, M.D.