Zen and the Art of Woofery by Moonforce Storm Gazer & Human
Excerpt
December, 2012.
Remembrance
It is a crisp December morning and the canal has frozen over. It is our first visit back there, even though it’s on our doorstep, since, well, since the incident. The water was warmer a month ago, in the dying days of autumn, before the ices of winter. Still cold enough to blow the wind out of your lungs in gasps should you go in, but not freezing.
I know, because I went in.
Not on purpose, you understand; following my dog. One of the first things that went through my mind was I would lose all my contacts as my phone was sure to die.
One of the things that didn’t go through my mind, not at first anyway, was that I might die too. It did after a while. Ten minutes? Twenty? Maybe more. You see, I couldn’t get out.
There was no initial worry, no thought of potential trouble. My feet could get no purchase on the concrete beneath the water line, it was round like a pregnant tummy; the edge was too high with no grounding to reach with my elbows and the 1 bank too American-Marine-haircut grassy and too steep to get a grip. As my fingers got numb, as my limbs began to tire — quickly I started to realise that as a fifty-year old man I was not as fit or my muscles as strong as my mind imagined. As I put my boot to the crease where the convex concrete curled up to meet the vertical wall of
the canal, my foot could get no purchase, as it bore my weight it slipped on the algae that was living there happily and I plunged down into the water again. My shifting feet stirred up a foot or more of mud. Churning waters deposited some of this earth into my open, submerged, gaping mouth. I regained some composure, a spluttering composure, and stood, the water up to my chest. The dog’s windmilling legs were ‘pawing’ at me. I tried again, although I had to feel for the join now through the opaque water. The same result. I was immersed again. The first seeds of worry were opening up in my gut. I was losing energy to the cold. The dog was going nuts. I reached for the bank again, the edge of the concrete, the bulge kept me a few feet from me hugging it. I felt for the crease with my toe. Grasped the edge as tightly as my getting-cold-in-a-hurry fingers would allow and tried to lever myself up. With the same result. The worry started to form its own
parasitic life within me, growing against my will like the hypothermia I could feel probing for weaknesses. And there were many.
