Exercise 3 (Liz) - Goat

Goat stood next to the stream watching the water. Goat thought, I like this grass here. Goat moved the grass around in his mouth and thought about his teeth – they were good teeth. Goat thought about his mother’s teeth – Goat remembered the holes, the pink fleshy gaps in her mouth where teeth should’ve been, and Goat was grateful for his teeth. Goat thought, without your teeth you can die – gets hard to eat and then you’re a bother and no one wants to take care of you anymore – this made Goat sad. Made Goat terrified too. Goat pushed that thought down.

Goat turned his attention to the water, the brown little stones beneath, and then in a second he realized he was still tonguing his teeth. Stop that, Goat whispered in his head. Goat thought about the first bite of grass in the morning, how his mouth, as it closed around the shoots, tasted acid and unpleasant from a night of ruminating and the first bite changed all that, how, with the first bite, Goat’s mouth brightened and tasted fresh and green and juicy again. Goat smiled, feeling placid, and then for an instant the panic gripped him again – the panic of lost teeth – but then Goat whispered to himself, Goat you have all your teeth and felt placid once more.

Goat remembered that yesterday he’d found a couple of really big pinecones under a stand of trees on the other side of the clearing – Goat got excited, thinking about them, but then Goat felt uncertainty, internal indecision, because his legs felt good the way they were, comfortably locked somehow, and Goat liked looking with his eyes unfocused into the water – it felt like too much effort to bend his head and refocus his eyes. Goat liked pinecones because they made nice noises when he kicked them, or nuzzled them with his snout; Goat didn’t actually eat the pinecones but he liked the noises they made and the way they bounced when they hit the springy dry soil or the rocks in the ground or the tree roots and trunks – Goat thought that the pinecones looked alive, almost, when they bounced and made noise, although he knew because he watched them fall and dry and turn from green to brown to black to rot that the pinecones were dead. Goat thought about the pinecones being dead and then thought about his mother being dead – his mother’s open body, after the things had gotten to it – and Goat felt panic again. No no no, Goat whispered to himself. He shook his head, without changing the focus of his eyes, and then Goat stopped shaking his head and looked over his shoulder, thinking that if anyone was around to see him he must look quite strange, and he wouldn’t like that, and it was useless to shake your head against things like that. A beetle or a clod of dirt that fell on your snout as you were nosing the soil for shoots – now that you could shake off, Goat thought. But a thought was different. A thought was not the same as a beetle.

Goat nosed at the grass beside the stream, and then he dipped his nose, just slightly, into the stream – not taking a drink but actually dipping in his nose. Goat snorted and then sneezed, thinking Brrrr. Goat thought, Should have seen that one coming. Goat looked at the stream again and felt sad. This time his eyes focused as he stared, and Goat watched the pattern of ripples as the stream flowed around one particular round rock. Goat thought that he’d like to splash through the stream like he did when he was very young and it was summer, when he splashed through the stream just because it was fun, and because it made his mother laugh – again Goat felt uncertainty and it hurt, it pulled at his chest and made Goat want to cry, because Goat wanted to run into the stream right now but the thought made him sad, and he knew that if he did it it wouldn’t make him feel happy like he wanted it to. He thought it would make him feel really sad. It made him feel really sad just imagining it. Goat looked down at the grass and sniffed; the water was cold still in his nose and it burned as he snuffled, and Goat felt sad and lonely.

Goat thought about the pinecones again and though this time he didn’t feel lazy he still felt frozen but, thinking about his legs, making an effort to picture them even though he could just as well have looked down at them, Goat thought that he didn’t want to move this time because it was too lonely. He thought about kicking the pinecone – he thought about how he thought about the pinecones as alive, even though he knew they were dried and dead.