Nachmi is my best friend

So no Dead Sea thus far. Yesterday, Effie had to attend a university interview, and she left me happily alone in her mum’s house for the day. I was content to spend a day at home. ‘Good’, I thought, ‘I can write a song. I can do a blog. I can read a book. It’s all good.’

It began well enough but there came a point, a few hours into my day when I had managed to wind myself into a caged beast of a mood. Desperately frustrated in claustrophobic surroundings; wanting so badly to be creative but lacking the necessary space to be so. The flat is so small and there is no comfortable, inspiring place to sit and spread out, let alone anyone to jam with. Plus, without getting too picky, a studio and some instruments would be handy.

I spent the remainder of the day stewing; sweating into the heat of the house, feeling utterly useless, unproductive and angrily depressed.

It’s not like I have any friends in Rishon Le Zion to relieve my boredom. It’s not like there’s anything to do here. So I eventually took myself and the dog, Nachmi, for a walk around the block.

Nachmi is well fun. Being a nineteen year old dog, with difficulties walking, seeing, hearing and eating, he is quite easy to bully.

He has very few teeth left, so I can rub and poke him till he eventually goes nuts and barks a high-pitched yap sound and bites me on the hand, a pathetic soft wet bite.

It doesn’t even hurt! Take that, Nachmi!

He spends most of the day sleeping in various parts of the house, and when he thinks no one’s looking, he attempts to raid the bin for leftover bits of paper and gristle.

If I pick up his walking lead, he suddenly bursts into a tiny massive frenzy, hips and eyes flaying madly in every direction. With uncontainable excitement, he bobs up and down the way cars do in hip hop videos, but much quicker and much cuter.

He hobbly-sprints to the door of the flat, then sprints to the door of the lift, then waits the ten seconds in the lift, with thinly veiled eager madness in his eyes.

When the lift door opens, he sprints to the door of the building and tries to open it with his nose.

Every time.

I open the door and watch with pride as he does a sharp left and dives (hobbles) into the immediate sand patch and cocks his right leg as high as it will go to let out a satisfying jet of relief urine. Pleased with his first effort, he bobs his head around and does a scraping motion with his hind legs, as if he’s burying the evidence of his territorial pissings.

This motion is rather pointless and ineffectual, and when you watch him continue to do the same scraping on the hard pavement, it becomes apparent that this is one of those learned habits that he’s just imitating now. He’s not hiding anything. It’s more of a light stretch than a courtesy.

His little dribble of cloudy yellow will still mockingly roll down the gentle hill of the street, regardless of what yoga his hind legs do.

Apparently in his youth, he wasn’t accustomed to soaking his feet in his own piss, that’s just one his many endearing aging eccentricities.

He has to endure at least a few poking and scruffing attacks from me. He squashes himself to the pavement and then tries to run away, before barking and going through the cute biting rigmarole again.

It’s our unspoken agreement. I’ll take you for walks Nachmi, only if you let me play rough.

I never had a dog.

The special sanded areas on the pavement, contain those thin trees you see about the place and house various alluring (for Nachmi) bits of other dog’s poo. He sniffs and occasionally nibbles on these, getting a yank in the collarbone if his dutiful walker spots him (I’m ALWAYS watching, Nachmi!).

He knows that he’s only supposed to poo in these areas too, otherwise he’s just causing shit-on-foot problems for pedestrians. However, his current sense-deprivation leads to an uncertainty as to where exactly in the world he is, and he is usually known to put a guilty face on and start squatting well before he reaches his allotted poo spot.

I have to lift him that extra metre, mid-poo, to the poo-arena, while he shows off his most concentrated pinched face (and his incidental doggy erection).

If I’m too late, then as the officially responsible one of the partnership, I get to kick his small roundish turd effort to an appropriate part of the street.

The merry journey to the end of the road is punctuated by regular stops to do more urination. He can’t just do it all in one go. No! That would be a waste of bladder muscles (which - he proudly shows off - still work).

He pisses in as many parts of the road as seems necessary. If, through one of his working senses, he is aware another dog’s piss, he either licks it, or adds to it.

Meeting other people on the street is always fun. Especially if they have dogs. No one stops to pet Nachmi though. Which is a bit mean. I know he’s ugly and sheds hairs when touched, but that’s no reason not to give him love. Right?

Conversations are held in the street. I express the subtle nuances of my personality through some sophisticated Hebrew:

“Shalom. Ken. Sa baba. Bye.”

That loosely translates to a short quotation on the transience of existence, by Kierkegaard.

And once Nachmi has almost got to the end of the road, it’s probably time to head back. It’s twice the effort up hill. All hard breathing and panting, tongue out, crystallized eyes wide open. Struggling but smiling.

Time to re-tread old pee stains, add to them/lick them if necessary and then get back in time for some well-earned, hand-fed bits of salami meat, chicken fat and some more love bullying from the big thing with the manic blue eyes.

Then he will rest for the remainder of the day, lying prostrate on my guitar bag.

Thankfully, I eventually made it out of the house yesterday to go jam with Tal and Chen in Tel Aviv. A hard-working, audience free, productive jam.

Good. Something other than dog love accomplished for the day.