Hench!

I.
There’s a black dog in my neighborhood that only has one eye. It’s very skinny, and it looks as though its skin was sewn up over where the socket would be, which is a little weird: the result is sort of as if there never had been an eye there to begin with. The dog is very graceful and very quiet and stalks back and forth in front of a house around the corner from my apartment.

I seem to remember reading, as a kid, some folklore relating to one-eyed black dogs, but I don’t remember exactly what it was. Because I’m lazy, I did some googling, and came across this from skell.org:

“The Black Dog haunted many parts of the country: in Lancashire called ‘Trash’ or ‘Skriker’, and on the Isle of Man, where he haunted Peel Castle, known as the Mauthe Doog. In Norfolk he is called Shuck, Old Shuck or the Shuck Dog, and in Suffolk, Shock, his name perhaps coming from Old Engligh scucca, a demon. The Black Dog was in some places thought to be the ghost of the unquiet dead. Black Dogs commonly haunted lanes, footpaths, bridges, crossroads and gateways.”

I’d though that the black dog appeared before travellers on lonely roads, and its coming fortold their death should they venture further. I don’t know if Clinton street qualifies as a lonely road. Not really. Anyway, the dog is there continues to be a little on the creepy side. I’m sure that it is a very nice dog, and not a portent of ruination and death.

II.
Sarah and I were going to the health food store when an old woman with green nailpolish demanded “Do you two like to make soup?” That woman was nuts, man. I immediately knew it was a bad idea to talk to her, especially because she would not have liked my answer: “No.”

I like to heat soup up, though. It’s nice. Most of you are probably unaware of the fact that I eat bowl of soup for lunch when the weather gets cold. In the summer, I eat some salad for lunch. Sometimes I switch it up, because I am a crazy and impulsive guy who lives on the edge.

III.
I started reading Octavio Paz’s the Labyrinth of Solitude, which is so far very good. I wish I’d paid more attention in Spanish class as a kid, because I would like to be able to read books like this in the original rather than in translation. It’s kind of shitty.

I don’t feel weird about reading Russian novelists in translation, because I think that I shouldn’t be expected to learn all this crazy-ass cyrillic shit. Spanish, on the other hand, is a language that I almost learned. I mean, I was close, and then I forgot it all. I forgot the tenses first, and now I don’t know shit except some nouns. It’s depressing. I should go to nightschool or something. I’m unilingual, for shit’s sake. I need to apply myself.

IV.
I listened to a lot of Captain Beefheart this weekend. Man. Orange Claw Hammer is a real good acapella song, which you wouln’t expect out off Captain Beefheart. He also does an incredible version of Moonlight in Vermont, which is kind of the aural equivalent of being stomped to death by a paisley-clad Yeti wearing one of those propellor beanies. I like that a lot of Beefhearts music sounds like some machine that just keeps going out of control and seems as though it might explode. I look at photos of the Magic Band in their weird house, and photos of weird cult groups like the Incredible String Band, and it really makes me wish I was travelling the country in a big, weird, red bus. I’d have a tambourine, and I’d hit it and yell things.

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