I can't sleep…
I need to get at the truth of a thing and dig and dig until it is dragged painfully to light – another doglike quality.
— Rachel Cusk, Second Place: A Novel (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, May 4, 2021)
Notes:
375 consecutive days. Like in a Row. Cove Island Morning Walk. The commitment to stop this obsession on the 366th day, came and went. Rachel Cusk: ‘…this balking of my will.’ This pull of something Larger.
10:00 a.m. yesterday. Cablevision contractor (full mask the entire time because it’s the right thing to do) takes his wire cutters, and with a quick turn of his wrist, strips the white pvc wrapper from the copper wire. I couldn’t do that without slashing my index finger. Wish I could do Something with these hands. Need to watch Dick Proenneke’s Youtube documentary on building a log cabin in the Alaskan Wilderness. That’s right. Get off-grid and build something.
4:35 a.m. Newspaper ‘Man’ (not Boy, not on a 2-wheeler but an early model Nissan) flicks his wrist and the NY Times sails in slow motion, its blue wrapper flapping in the air, and hits the driveway with a thud. I’d like to do this, just one morning…Fling papers on driveways, watch them skid on dewy front yards, or slow the car to wind it way back and slam it against the garage door…
4:45 a.m. I turn onto the I-95 entrance ramp. Truckers. So many Trucks. So many red tail lights. Not one time in the last 60-75 days, as I enter the merging lane, have these monster trucks not moved into the center lane to let me enter. Not.One.Time. Driving all night and still have the decency and courtesy of swinging their big rigs into the center lane to let me in. Not one Time. That’s Professional.
I’m across from this giant tandem semi, which wobbles over into my lane and then straightens out. Must have reached over to give his puppy a snack. Wheels. Life on the Road. “It can get lonely on the road…60% of truckers are pet owners, 40% of them taking their pets on the road with them…Sarah Giles, 27, drives for All Freight Carriers and carries a pair of dogs — and…a green-cheeked conure parakeet. ‘They’re about a foot long, as smart as a 4-year-old and very affectionate,’ she said. ‘Bonnie wants to be on me all the time, insists on everything her way, and doesn’t like strangers near the truck.’”
Sarah has a pair (!) of dogs and parakeet! I look ahead. Of the 10 truckers in front of me, 4 have buddies riding along. My passenger seat is dark, empty, and Sad. No friends. That’s Sad.
5:39 a.m. I make my way up to the point at Cove Island Park.
Walking by myself.
No puppy.
But damn, what a view…
Photo: DK @ Daybreak. 5:24 to 5:39 am, May 15, 2021. 46° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT.
There’s a certain point in life at which you realise it’s no longer interesting that time goes forward – or rather, that its forward-going-ness has been the central plank of life’s illusion, and that while you were waiting to see what was going to happen next, you were steadily being robbed of all you had. Language is the only thing capable of stopping the flow of time, because it exists in time, is made of time, yet it is eternal – or can be. An image is also eternal, but it has no dealings with time – it disowns it, as it has to do, for how could one ever in the practical world scrutinise or comprehend the balance sheet of time that brought about the image’s unending moment?
— Rachel Cusk, Second Place: A Novel (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, May 4, 2021)
Photo: DK @ Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. 5:44 am, May 3, 2021.
In the silence the soothing sights and sounds of the marsh, the waving grasses flecked with butterflies, the distant soughing of the sea, the trailing ribbons of birdsong and the calls of the geese and gulls, could come into focus. ‘It’s good to sit and watch this gentle world,’ L said. ‘We tire ourselves out so.’
— Rachel Cusk, Second Place: A Novel (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, May 4, 2021)
DK Photo @ Daybreak. 4:52 to 5:34 am, May 3, 2021. 39° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT.
Notes: