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CwHD12
This essay is from Conversations With A Hypoxic Dog, the eponym for this log.
HENRY
Henry
Polk sat before a fire with his arms outstretched, palms offered to
the tickling warmth of little tongues of flames. (Though his name
might well be Harold Pollard. This is not the important thing.) The
man sat on a large flat stone before a small rock-encircled pit where
pieces of wood---a chest it was, smashed and pulled apart, a chest of
drawers, the drawers, too, smashed and pulled apart---where pieces of
wood, yellow-white, were splintered and black where lacquered--turned
to ash. (The chemistry of this simple business is quite something if
one were the least bit inclined to expend some effort on chemistry.
Bit too daunting for most, though. Besides, the fire's the thing.
What matters chemistry?) On top of this merrily crackling kindling, a
wooden bust has been placed, and it, too, now fed the flames.
It
is winter, clearly, as snow remains in gritty patches in the shady
north side of the large rhododendrons, and in the shadow of the
large, gray erratic that defines the site. Conifers, both Douglas fir
and red cedar stand deep green as background to the site. The ground
about the fire pit was tamped hard with the passing of many feet. It
was winter. (This is what I mean: clearly we have located Herman in
the northern hemisphere. It is winter; take my word for it, although
early spring is certainly possible. These details are not important.
It is cold and most would say dreary. That is what I mean.)
A
cold dawning. A frigid waft of air came off the talused hillside at
the man's back. No matter. His face is composed. Put together. No
signs of discomfort, dismay, disingenuousness. He sat, absently
warming his hands.
The
sun rises.
He
is a strange old man. He wears a long, wool topcoat, thread bare at
collar and cuff. His hair is cropped short and grayed; his neck is
thickly wrinkled; his face is ruddy, bearded; his hands are ingrained
with dirt; his fingernails are yellowed and broken. As he inhales a
lungful of air, his shoulders straighten and his head lifts and his
eyes dance in the firelight.
(The
scene is now set, yes? There is some understanding of the basic
conditions? Simple enough: an old man, rather odd fellow, sitting in
some clearing in the mountains [though mountains are not explicit,
one hopes they came to mind] sitting before a fire in a clearing on
what has become a chilly day a dawning.)
Hank
reaches out, gingerly takes the base of the little statuette, and
turns the blackened side up. He considers the face of Gautama.
Is
it sacrilege?
Hank
breathes in, breathes out. Perhaps he sighs, however unlikely that
might be. He breathes in, he breathes out.
Why
do men engage in such meaningless enquiry?
Am
I cold? he asks himself. If I answer, yes, I am cold, I am cold. If I
answer, no, I am not cold, I am not cold. Although the mind is quite
perverse enough to invert the logic.
Am
I alone and suffering (that ubiquitous human condition!)?
Listen
carefully for the answer.
Wait
for it now.
Wait.
Listen.
(Just
as I thought. What nonsense. Beckett made a career explicating such
nonsense. The Sam Spade of Angst. The poor pitiful creature.
Generous, though.)
Hank
sat waiting.
The
dawn succumbed to heavy cloud pulsing into the low hills, into the
mountains, challenging the light.
Hank
sat not waiting.
The
snow fell as thick fat flakes; and the man has drawn back his hands,
arms crossed over belly, body now rounded slightly over arms. He was
a shade in the snowfall.
Waiting.
Or
perhaps not.
(The
sense is that Hank seems perfectly at ease.)
The
fire hissed. The snow fell in large, fat flakes, straight down, down.
The breeze off the hillside at the man's back had died. (Some
consolation in that, considering the wind chill factor and all. It is
to be assumed, hopefully, that one would understand that Hank doesn't
give a tinker's damn for the wind chill factor. Perhaps I should omit
the wind chill factor? Consolation doesn't seem to be the name of the
game here. Strange old fellow. I rather like him though. He's a
tough, old goat. Brings to mind one of my heroes. [No objection, I
hope, to a short, tangential, aside.] Walter Bonatti and his India
Indian porter were high in the death zone, attempting to a put a
first ascent up K2. Benighted, storm bound, they sat through the
night on a bit of rock shelf waiting for the dawn, waiting for the
storm to abate. Bonatti sleeping, finally. Bonatti waking in the
morning. Bonatti trying to rouse his companion. Bonatti finding, to
his dismay, that the man was dead.)
Cold.
Not
cold.
Perverse
machinations of the intellect, the emotions.
Add
them to the fire, will you.
Hank
has spoken?
Snowing
harder. Nasty turn, this weather. Before our eyes the snowfall
engulfs the scene and all that remains is the hissing of the fire in
an impressionistic whiteness or grayness or some combination thereof
(the way televisions go awry, or use to, remember? Signal lost?) And
then
Silence
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