Tag: return

A Note to Commemorate

/ Derek Mueller
⏳ Approximate reading time: 2 mins

A note to commemorate the day when, around 4 p.m., the more or less regular into-the-run hour after a day of free-ranging, only four chickens (Tiny Honey, Betty, Mo, and Lightfoot) were in the yard and Perla was nowhere to be found. And to commemorate the rallying of a couple of different search parties, A. and Feta looking ALL OVER the place for any trace of a feather, then me doubling down and canvassing EVERY steep, slippy embankment at the edge of the yard for an hour. In my mind goddesses merciful I climbed the entire Blue Ridge Mountains. And to commemorate how as A. left for her evening volunteer hours a short time later, she asked me if I thought Perla might be alive, and I said, no, I don’t think so. She must’ve gotten scooped by the strongest and stealthiest of creatures mid-morning because I was outside all afternoon and though I didn’t do a head count, I was sure I would have heard such an incident, or Mo would have raised a fit, or there would have been a floof of feathers to show for the vanishing. And to commemorate how at around 6 p.m. I went outside to bring the four chickens some bereavement meal worms and to spend a moment with them in quiet observance, only to see Perla there on the first terrace near the pines, strutting toward me, not wanting to miss the stories we were going to tell about her, or maybe just checking to see if an afternoon fugue state would improve her place in the pecking order. tldr; Perla is fine and the five are safely in their run for the night.

Perla (left) says to Betty (right), she says, “I got lost!”
Perla evidently hadn’t changed her timekeeping for daylight savings time.
The flock enjoys a few more late day free-ranging minutes together.

With Our Fear

/ Derek Mueller

⏳ Approximate reading time: < 1 minAnother from Jeff Vandermeer’s Annihilation, what somewhere has been called series whose figments bear strange shadowforms of H. P. Lovecraft:

“Should we go back?” the surveyor would say, or I would say.

And the other would say, “Just around the next corner. Just a little farther, and then we will go back.” It was a test of fragile trust. It was a test of our curiosity and fascination, which walked side by side with our fear. A test of whether we preferred to be ignorant or unsafe. The feel of our boots as we advanced step by careful step through that viscous discharge, the way in which the stickiness seemed to mire us even when we managed to keep moving, would eventually end in inertia, we knew. If we pushed it too far.

But then the surveyor rounded a corner ahead of me and recoiled into me, shoved me back up the steps, and I let her. (58-59)

Dog-eared, a page and its few lines I at first associated with initiates, treacherous descent, down a squish stairwell, footfalls better lace up your boots. But the shambles memory cast as “I would say” or “the other would say,” a whatever dialogue, both of them knowing forward means down deeper and down deeper means longer back. Or end. End in inertia. And with this it’s not only initiates down a staircase into the unknown below but a tandem pursuit-non-pursuit, a companionable procession whose interruption–please someone shove–they both seemed to be ready for, to welcome when, let’s return, let’s go back up again, it came.