cats, dogs, ISO, cats and dogs

I see a photo of my friend on social media during COVID. His partner took it while standing above him as he lay on the lawn - at home because he could not work. I recognise the grass as his own backyard. He has tracky-daks on, and trainers, but his head was not in the photo, just his legs, feet and torso. I don't know if it was the angle or some kind of trick with the optics, but it looked like his feet were bent the wrong way, like a disfigurement. It was nothing.

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Our dog died during the pandemic. She was ten. They found a hole in one of the bones in her spine, she got a week or more here with us until it could not go on. She needed to be hand fed and one of us would sleep in the lounge-room with her to help her get in and out of the house at night or make her more comfortable, or syringe water into her mouth, or hold the water bowl beneath her schnookie chin. It was palliative care; she was doped up and dying and we were saying our goodbyes.
She was a running dog, a swimming dog, a jumping dog. She was all those things. By breed she was a Royal dog from Hungary. There's still dog-proof extensions made of wire and steel on the five-foot-high white brick walls which enclose our backyard. As recently as January (when the steel and wire went up) she was hurdling the fence to escape the summer thunder in the sky, and the lightning. She was always scared of loud noises. Fireworks. She was timid but incrtedibly loving.
When she was on the way out I asked the vet what the measure was for a dog's quality of life? What is the threshold for quality.
Is she barking at other dogs or passers by? No.
Is she clamouring for food? No.
Is she gathering her toys or hiding things or being a rascal? No.
Is she wagging her tail? Sometimes.
Is she prancing through the shallows of the Bay or Bass Strait looking for fish and dancing with the tiny shadows of things she thinks are fish? Is she at 13th Beach? No.
Is she jogging solidly along beside me for five kilometres, smiling all the way? No.
Is she jumping up on the bed on a weekend morning and burrowing herself under the blankets? No.
Is she chasing the soccer ball and bumping it with her glorious long wet nose? No. No she is not.
The good thing about losing our friend was that she had all four of us looking after her twenty-four hours a day for that special time. The whole family was here to look after her because we couldn't go anywhere much.
She was a good girl, we all loved her, and it was always clear how much she loved us.

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In my dream your fat mouth was a gun.

In my dream I was rescuing something from a flowing river, I think a dog or a child.
It looked like the Yarra up at Warrandyte.
A black sawn floated past on its back with its legs tucked up and crossed over like it was dead or in mourning or in repose, or in a coffin. Time stood still in the dream, as it can, and it was as beautiful as visions can get, brief and unusually vivid. The swan had the aura of a sleeping priest. I envy Western Australia having a black swan on their flag. There must be thousands on the Yarra;, these big, black water birds who swim in pairs. With those bent necks. There is a deformity in humans called swan neck where the fingers are not straight at the joints. A dreamcatcher person might say my fleeting dream was all about new opportunities coming my way, the dream, by the river, time stops. But I think not.

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I asked The Age if I could write about Joy Division and their record Closer. This year it's 40-years-old, sometime in June is the actual birthday I believe. The Age said yes. I re-watched the doco 'Joy Division' made by Grant Gee, who has also made films about Radiohead and Bowie in Berlin. It was amazing to see again. Joy Division didn't release much music - two albums and bits and pieces - then the singer died by hanging before the second album even came out. They have been so wildly influential and have such mythology that there's been more written about them than by them.

I was 13 when Closer came out and wasn't listening to Joy Division yet but I wasn't far off. Around the age of 15 I was into a radio station in my home town of Christchurch, New Zealand, called Radio U. It was FM and it was based at the University. It still exists as RDU, on FM and online, and it still rules. The music I heard back in the very early 80s was ridiculous and formative, to say the least. I remember hearing White Lines and The Message every day almost, but also The Fall, Joy Division, Cabaret Voltaire, Young Marble Giants, Wire, Gang of Four, Scritti Politti; all the postpunk heroes. Also early hiphop and lots of dub and reggae. I also came to realise that most of the good bands in Christchurch and nearby (ish) Dunedin at the time - which were also always played on high rotation - sounded a fair bit like Joy Division, or The Fall or Young Marble Giants. But only those three. It was a perfect storm. Someone bought Still, the outtakes and live cuts album, and we'd have small gatherings to drink beer and sit on beer crates and listen to it over and over. Then there was this guy Howard, from another school, who we met. Howard played the bass. He had one of those silly 80's headless basses, a black Steinberger, and he could play Joy Division lines, which was illuminating because I could see how it was done. Howard always wore black and was tall and mysterious. He once boasted that his Steinberger bass was indestructible but he had destroyed it regardless. I'm not sure any of that matters in terms of trying to understand Closer, a record I've been listening to for decades without understanding.

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There have been incidents in the village during Iso. One I tweeted because not a lot else was going on. It was to do with cats and the NSW drug squad, and you can find the thread here.

Another that happened was probably due only to being hyper-alert during COVID; small sounds in the street, some kerfuffle or other. One evening with only Tom and I at home - the hyper-alert ones - were heard a to-do outside and, thinking it was the war criminals over the street, rushed out. A lady called Monica was lying on our nature strip, crying and in pain, with her two young black kelpies pulling away and snarling and barking, because a man with a guide dog, training a guide dog we think, his vision seemed tiptop, was standing over her, threatening her, swearing at her and accusing her of all sorts of dog and life related misdemeanours.

We shooed him away. He came back once but we shooed him away again.

Poor Monica had already fallen over in our street, up the way a bit. That's what she said, that she fell over just up there. She was medicated. When I asked her if she was on anything - figuring out how to best to help this lovely lady who took a tumble or two - she raised one eyebrow, after a time, and said 'I'm pretty out of it.' She was maybe a bit older than me. Maybe 60. On her first bingle up the way, the kelpies pulling like billy-O, she hurt her wrist. It was bruised badly. Then she came adrift again! Outside ours. The guide dog guy was hooking into her for whatever; not controlling her dogs probably.

We helped her up and took stock and Tommy ended up riding around the block to her house - she gave us the address - to get her husband while her and I sat on my low brick fence and shot the shit. Her dogs were beautiful but lively. One was called Monty; he had the orange harness. I told her we'd lost a dog recently and it was nice. Tom rode back and her husband was on the way and he pulled up in tradie gear in a ute and took her and the dogs home. Tom said later that when he rang on the doorbell and explained the scenario to Allan, the husband, he seemed to know what was what, like it happened a lot or at least sometimes.

They came around in a couple of days with a bottle of pinot gris and a box of Favourites, and a card. I like Monica. Something tells me she's trying her best.