Walking the Dog

"Oh my god. These woods are so enchanting, I must stand very still right here in the moment, and listen to that lone bird that sounds like some sort of teradactyl as it zigzags in the gray-blue sky above me. Shhh. Leaves crinkle underfoot, and that tree trunk looks like a drawing of a tree trunk, the detail and perfection almost overwhelming. It's alive."

Her brown hair, which she hadn't bothered to wash in two days, lay heavy on her shoulders in what was either stylish straightness or unattractive clumps, she couldn't decide. "If only my hair bounced and weightlessly separated in gusts of November wind in the sunlit dusk."

"Let's talk about you.' Wouldn't that be a good first line? That line says it all," she thought. "Selfless from the get-go. You'd hardly need anything else! Eureka! The form has to philosophically agree with the content. The form may be more important than the content." The dog tugged at her leash as she walked unsteadily through deep moss. Glowing green lichen softly lit her winding path and cracking branches echoed in dense patches of sky beyond, where the people were.

"If a dog pulls on its leash, does it mean you can't control it?" Behind sun glasses she had watched other dog walkers in her neighborhood, especially the thin blonde woman who, she thought, was younger than she, and appeared to have it really together. She could be seen frequently running in stretchy technical fabrics that move moisture away from the body and are made specifically for that purpose. Her dog wasn't on a leash and walked obediently beside her.

One day she and dog-on-a-leash approached the woodlot, and running-woman bounced past, greeting her with a heartfelt "Hi." She was mortified at her voice, which squeaked a strange and high-pitched "hello", crackling like a transistor radio. "Heel!" she said a little too loudly, with authority. "Should I hold the leash with my right or left hand? Which looks better? which better conveys dominance? which is correct? what would Cezar Milan advise?"

The woodlot is a place for strange encounters, she thinks. A liminal place where rules of the surrounding neighborhoods can't reach. She vows to sew every person she knows a special design on a small piece of natural fabric of special color for each, with one word attached, a word that is especially for them, that shows she has looked deeply at them, and pondered their existence. She wishes that her mother, or perhaps an insightful and wise teacher, had given her a word.

Emerging from the woods onto a street lined with modest houses with semi-landscaped lawns, she reaches under her jacket and tugs at the too-short cotton undershirt which her daughter had left at home on her last visit and now was riding halfway up her back. Yanking it down and pushing its edge into her slightly too-tight jeans was getting old. She imagines midwestern women peering from behind their livingroom curtains, like her mother used to do, holding their Dawn Dish Detergent that cuts grease in one hand and a dishcloth with pictures of wine bottles in the other and wishing they were thinner, and their hair was longer, and they again resolve to walk every day for 45 minutes just like that woman with the really cool hair who is walking by.