Adventures with a broken knee cap

In the old days when I had an intact knee cap, the main meal for the dogs was roasted chicken which I would acquire from the local Stater Bros., but with my knee cap no longer intact, I’ve been resorting to canned food.  Ben and Jessica like it fine, but Duffy is fussy.  Sometimes he likes canned tuna.  And of course Jessica likes to lick the empty cans.  Ben, with the longer tongue has been finding food at the bottom of the cans that Jessica can’t reach.  On November 5th (2019), for reasons unclear, Ben crunched up a tuna can in his mouth which started bleeding; which he thought to cure by licking his legs.  When I saw the carpet around his licked legs red with blood, I got a wet wash cloth and cleaned it.  Ben though moved to another place in the carpet and continued on. 

I have had plenty of experience with bleeding in my own mouth and so thought that if I could get Ben to quit licking his leg and calm down the bleeding would stop, but he wouldn’t quit; so I decided to take him to the vet.  I put him in the Jeep and went back into the house to take some quick swipes with wet wash cloths at my bleeding carpet.  I also added some spot cleaner to the messes.

When I went back to the Jeep, Ben was sitting calmly in the back seat, no longer licking himself and no longer bleeding.  I decided to take him to an area at the river where there were shade trees and where we could walk gently about for a short while.  Maybe he would even feel like lying on the sand; which he did. 

Since I was more concerned about Ben’s bleeding than my balance, I stumbled about quite a bit, but never actually fell down. 

On the way home I stopped at Rite Aid and bought some vanilla ice cream and at home put some in a bowl and spoon fed it to Ben – a home remedy for bleeding mouths and settling one’s stomach if one has swallowed blood.  I don’t recall whether I made up this home remedy or heard it from someone.  In any case Ben liked the ice cream. 

When we got back to the house, Jessica and Duffy were delighted to see that Ben was okay.  And he graciously accepted their attention.  I spent some more time trying to clean the carpet & then joined Ben in taking a nap.  We woke after a couple of hours.  I gave them Alaskan Salmon and Chicken Jerky treats.

It is 9:40 p.m.  The dogs are all sleeping, but I’m wide awake.  J   I’ll work some more on the carpet tomorrow.  L

Tastes of Honey

I noticed, and consequently read in the TLS (November 1, 2019) a review of Tastes of Honey, subtitled “The making of Shelagh Delaney and a cultural revolution.”  

“A fortnight ago I didn’t know the theatre existed”, Shelagh Delaney claimed when she sent her first play, A Taste of Honey, to the theatre director Joan Littlewood.  This was a lie.  But at just nineteen years old, Delaney – the daughter of a Salford bus driver – already had a pretty good idea about what the gatekeepers of the London arts scene wanted to hear. . . Delaney quite deliberately presented herself as ‘a naïve, northern ingenue’ – and the identity, though restrictive, struck.”  So begins the review by Anna Coatman of Selina Todd’s Tastes of Honey.

The idea that any “arts scene” has gatekeepers is off-putting, but Delaney apparently got to write what she wanted, made a lot of money, and just in  case A taste of Honey wasn’t quite all she wanted, she wrote other things, but nothing quite as popular, or, to take up Selina Todd’s primary interest, quite as revolutionary.  Delaney was a pioneer in the feminist movement.  “As a school girl, Delaney had told the (shocked) mother of a friend: ‘Oh, I would like to have a baby, but I wouldn’t like a husband, I don’t want to be married’.  As an adult, she would live by these words: in 1963 she discovered she was pregnant . . . and the following year she gave birth to a daughter, Charlotte, whom she brought up as a single parent. . . “Sadly, in 2004, the writer discovered a lump in her breast; and in 2011 she died at home, five days before her seventy-third birthday, holding her daughter’s hand.”

On missing my West Wight Potter

I do miss my West Wight Potter, but I don't miss its trailer.  When I bought the Potter I received with it a number of trailer horror-stories.  Most revolved around one's inability to keep sea-water away from the wheel bearings.  You pack grease in there fairly often and hope for the best.  Also, it is such a light affair (the little 14-foot Potter and its trailer) that it bounces about as you drive.  It did however have an extension so I could get it well into the water without getting the car's rear wheels all the way in the water.  Also, I was so paranoid about the trailer that I packed grease on the bearings much more often (probably) than was necessary and so never had an actual horror-story of my own, but worry isn't good for one, as I learned later.

Not that I'd be taking it out nowadays.  I live too far from the ocean and other inconveniences, but I recall that half of the fun with the Potter was sitting out in it on sunny days reading and feeling nautical in my back yard -- especially now that my new neighbor is modifying his driveway and backyard gate so he can get a travel-trailer back there.  When I moved to San Jacinto in 1999 I opted to have a small gate, tree, and grass instead of concrete for a recreational vehicle.  I like the tree too much to get rid of it now even if I could tolerate concrete out front; which I couldn't, but I do still miss the Potter.    The Potter was inadequate for actually sailing in the Pacific waters off the California coast; so later on I sold mine and got a Catalina 22 which Susan liked much better.  I liked the Potter for a free-diving platform not for actually sailing and it was fine for that.

As to creativity, my recent broken-knee-cap mishap has taken my attention away from possible creative considerations -- not that I was in danger of actual creating anything -- but I do regularly consider it. 

Limping People

    I notice them now,
    Though I never used to,
    Limping along with
    A gait like mine:
    The trembling knee,
    The steadying cane,
    The many I’ve been ignoring.

    I dreamt last night
    Of meeting someone,
    We were younger then
    With nothing minding:
    Coffee and conversation.
    I went on ahead.  We’d
    Meet by the way

    Some place, my dream
    Non-specific.  I saw
    It last night like an older film
    Her gentle looks confounding. 
    I’ll hold the tiller till the
    Dream dies away my
    Thoughts stay full of longing.

Morning Rain

 

    Rain, falling round about
    Is gently covering
    Everything I see.  Keeping
    Now is hard, rushing
    Off as thoughts strive
    To do.  There has been
    Much rushing, striving.

    I stood like this in the
    Yellow Sea, stretching
    From here through the
    Barbed wire fence
    On out to the horizon.
    Later with my
    Seabag near I
   
    Watched the bus coming
    To take me to Pendleton . . .
    And in a rain like this
    In a grotto near
    Newport Beach with her
    Eyes sparkling a sweetness
    I was sure would last forever.

Before the Wind

    Sailing before the wind
    This long while I
    Wasn’t prepared to
    See it change, put
    Me on a broad reach,
    Scrambling below for
    My spinnaker half-

    Heartedly, settling for
    The Genoa and as the
    Wind grew, the working
    Jib and then the storm.
    Fitting this if it's more
    Wind than I can handle,
    Limping from stem to stern

    Well enough when the weather
    Was fair, but this strange wind
    Shoves me whither it will.
    Now down to my smallest
    Sail, gripping the tiller with
    Knuckles white I feel
    The overwhelming come.

Wounded Bait

    I’m here as well as I can be,
    Braced at foot and knee,
    Thrust-spear honed sharp
    Pointed toward the herd –
    No time to think of what
    Comes next, whether to be
    Or not in a pleasant place.

    After the wolves my leg
    Won’t work as of old –
    Can’t run to hunt –
    Can’t pivot to fight
    Enemies who come.
    I can stand here and wound
    The beast that runs me down.

    Good food it will be for those
    At camp and good to see
    By those who dash out at
    The right time.  The sun sees
    Me too, breathing all this 
    In as I should, and fine:
    Hunting here one last time.