Disclaimers and Dr.Pepper

3-11-4

6:08 pm

First, let’s address the disclaimers.

Disclaimer: This is my third time out this week to collect myself through nature writing. Every day, as the weather improves, I can’t help but to think, so will my writing (I am a superstitious writer). Here’s the thing, I am obsessively searching/on the lookout for new angles to write from. I know that this warm tease of weather will bring out new ideas, plus I’m reflecting nature’s cue, feeling refreshed myself. Lately, I’ve been suffocating in my winter tone.

  Disclaimer: I am writing long hand today A.) because I can stand to, temperature wise and B.) more importantly, I’m trying to stack up my chicken scratch in this specific notebook, my notebook from jail.

Last week, one of eleven students/men did their homework (three pages of “whatever you want”-- I know, this open endedness is probably part of the problem).  So, I had to get up on my soap box real quick and tell them about themselves (this is truly an art. You cannot be the yakkity yak bully public school teacher, but you also want/expect for them to do some work).

Next, my student asked, “Siobhan, where’s your three pages?”

Trying to save face, I passed him this scarcely written in notebook.

He says, “This not three pages,” smiles, and hands it back to me.

I told him (after sucking my teeth), “Come to my school Brandon. I’ll show you fifty plus pages.”

He caught me, and I was glad he did.

Never preach what you don’t practice. More accurately, be able to back up the practice you preach.  Even though I easily had more than three pages of writing sitting inside my school bag, inside the car which sat outside of the jail at that very moment, there was no way to prove that I had kept up my end of the bargain. He wasn’t trying to hear it, just as I wasn’t trying to hear why he or his classmates couldn’t produce three pages.

***

So here I am at my corner.

Different weather (warmer)

Different smell (the faint undertone of fresh dog poop-- juicer)

Different sounds (“I’m about to pop you! You know not to go in the street!”)

Said the woman in a tight purple shirt walking a pit bull, to one of her three children. They passed earlier on their way to the corner store.

Humans dominate in noise making when the weather gets warmer. We want to make sure we still got lungs that work, want to make sure the long corridors of streets are capable of carrying our voice like the dusty telephone lines above our head. Cabin fever is a hell of a disease (in the voice of Charlie Murphy).

People and dogs galore.

Do you remember the original/animated 101 Dalmatians? In the opening credits, shown are owners walking their dog which looks like them: the lanky and pointy nosed bun wearing librarian is walking the lanky and pointy nosed grey hound (are grey hounds exceptionally smart? I suspect this is the suggestion here). Then there’s the squat bald Danny DeVito looking  man who, you guessed it, is walking Squat the bull dog.

My point: why is this theory so damn accurate?

In the Islands (St. Lucia) there was one main breed of dog: a mangy nervous rat looking mutt thing (sadly, starvation had a lot to do with this look), and even here I found my brain adhering to the dog/human theory. St. Lucians, generally speaking, are a nervous/superstitious people who do not have the luxury to keep dogs as pets. These dogs (most which are street dogs) are treated as nuisances. 

Back to America, where we have such things as dog walkers/dog sitters. The thought of a dog walker threw me for a loop when I tried to lay the 101 Dalmatian theory on my imagined female dog walker. Confused, I wondered  which dog out of the her bunch was hers? Any? Then I realized it didn’t matter, the woman was a dog walker. She likes/is all of them. She’s not the reflection of one dog at the end of a leash, she’s the reflection of all/many dogs at the end of a leash.

I used to fantasize about having a yellow, black, and chocolate lab all at once. There’s was something about the sameness and diversity of that bunch, aesthetically speaking, that intrigued me. It's like those murals where a group of differently colored people have their hands in a pile, or a generic ad for a school that needs to include a model/student from each continent in one jolly unifying shot. 

                =    

Holy staged.

I swear I smell hot dogs right now. Someone is really pushing this whole summer feeling thing. I guess that makes two of us.

At my feet sits a crumpled receipt. You know my pandora box opening self is gonna look:

Drum roll please:

Family Dollar

Store # 03675 Wilkinsburg

Dr. Pepper 16 oz. $1.25

Tax .09

Total $1.34

Not the best piece of literature, but it does, as usual, invite me to associate:

Dr. Pepper

Dr. Pib

The bib of American 
drinking

Pop

Soda Pop

Soda

Baby bottles filled with

Cola

Pepsi black

Coke white

Look at you

ready to fight

Face it

Facts

Pacts

with

Corporations

Type two diabetes

in third world nations--

Vacation 
Stations 

Haitians
Banana 
Plantations

Lent the season

of first world

rations