Ugh
Posted 11/24/2008 6:13am by Eugene Wyatt.
This past week was spent getting ready for the weeks to come: taking care of old business, making way for new business. I compile a list and like to cross things off it, but I can be undone, haunted even, if I fail to realize that some entries are not as simple as “Call so & so” or “Pay such and such.” These more complex entries usually start with the words, “Schedule…” or “Think through…” They take longer to accomplish because they require me to learn something I don't know.
Beyond that which can be learned (perhaps a reason for list making) are disorders at extremes from understanding; these are realities (or are they unrealities) that are always poorly described; they lack a proper name, their categorization is never adequate. They exist as a hovering between feeling and thought, they are experienced when death approaches.
Ugh died. The Wednesday before last he was electrocuted after getting his rear feet caught in the fence; how he got into it, we don’t know; why he couldn’t get out of it, we don’t know. It happened during the night and Dominique found him in the morning. She called and tearfully told me; I was in New York at a Greenmarket meeting; on the ride back to the farm I felt like I should know something that I didn’t.
The first time I saw death was on the front lawn of our house in Fresno, California in 1953 on a hot summer night: a traffic accident, a teenage boy, much older than I, had been thrown from a speeding car that turned over in the street. He had a black leather jacket on, it covered his head, I couldn’t see his face, he was still and our neighbors were wild in confusion. I looked at his body quietly until I was pulled back, death was something a little boy shouldn’t see. But I saw it.
The next time death came to me, it was closer, more personal: in 1956 my grandfather died of a heart attack. I loved the time I’d spent with him but it had ended and it took me a long while to not think of missing that good time. The sense that death isn’t right went away only when I didn’t think about it. Since then I’ve lost my grandmothers, my mother, my father, a brother and several friends, not to mention the publicly known that we have lost together. The sense of death is unrequited by time; I have not been able to better understand death than when I was a child.
And now it’s a sheep. Charisma is something that is not unique to human beings, some animals have it. Ugh had it. He was there for all to see. Read of his coming to be.
When I got back to the barn, I parked the truck and got on the tractor; I had to bury him. I drove awkwardly to the field and there Dominique was by his body cleaning a crate of garlic. I got off the tractor, looked down at him and said, “You fuck, how could you make me feel like this.” She didn’t laugh and I felt even more stupid.
With the tractor I dug a grave near what we call Shade’s tree, a big tree where we buried Shade my kelpie two years ago. We put Ugh in the bucket of the tractor; I said to Dominique, “There’s no easy way to do this,” and drove him to his grave. As gently as we could, we slid him off the bucket and into the hole. For flowers, Dominique dropped some garlic into his grave and I covered him with earth. I looked at her and said, “He was a good sheep,” because there is good in this world and that’s what death tells me.
Ugh died. The Wednesday before last he was electrocuted after getting his rear feet caught in the fence; how he got into it, we don’t know; why he couldn’t get out of it, we don’t know. It happened during the night and Dominique found him in the morning. She called and tearfully told me; I was in New York at a Greenmarket meeting; on the ride back to the farm I felt like I should know something that I didn’t.
The first time I saw death was on the front lawn of our house in Fresno, California in 1953 on a hot summer night: a traffic accident, a teenage boy, much older than I, had been thrown from a speeding car that turned over in the street. He had a black leather jacket on, it covered his head, I couldn’t see his face, he was still and our neighbors were wild in confusion. I looked at his body quietly until I was pulled back, death was something a little boy shouldn’t see. But I saw it.
The next time death came to me, it was closer, more personal: in 1956 my grandfather died of a heart attack. I loved the time I’d spent with him but it had ended and it took me a long while to not think of missing that good time. The sense that death isn’t right went away only when I didn’t think about it. Since then I’ve lost my grandmothers, my mother, my father, a brother and several friends, not to mention the publicly known that we have lost together. The sense of death is unrequited by time; I have not been able to better understand death than when I was a child.
And now it’s a sheep. Charisma is something that is not unique to human beings, some animals have it. Ugh had it. He was there for all to see. Read of his coming to be.
When I got back to the barn, I parked the truck and got on the tractor; I had to bury him. I drove awkwardly to the field and there Dominique was by his body cleaning a crate of garlic. I got off the tractor, looked down at him and said, “You fuck, how could you make me feel like this.” She didn’t laugh and I felt even more stupid.
With the tractor I dug a grave near what we call Shade’s tree, a big tree where we buried Shade my kelpie two years ago. We put Ugh in the bucket of the tractor; I said to Dominique, “There’s no easy way to do this,” and drove him to his grave. As gently as we could, we slid him off the bucket and into the hole. For flowers, Dominique dropped some garlic into his grave and I covered him with earth. I looked at her and said, “He was a good sheep,” because there is good in this world and that’s what death tells me.
Ugh (2003-2008)
0 Comments »