Zuzu, our dog, has mud up her nose. The mud is irritating. She is facing the bookshelf, ears cocked, and keeps emitting this “shhhhnnnUUHHHH” sound with a vigorous head shake that is part nasal hum, part reverse sneeze. After a few seconds of this, she goes very quiet, then sharply sucks in a lot of air before bursting in to a hacking/spluttering routine that makes me glad I’m over on the other side of the room. The fact that mud is up her nose should surprise no one. She came back from the dog park utterly caked, and I’ve still got splatters up both legs from when she’d tear by at top speed, sprinting after stick after stick after stick after stick in big infinity loops across the waterlogged turf.

Earlier today I had a thought about writing and momentum and inspiration that leaned pretty heavily on a brain-as-bank metaphor and it went something like this : it doesn’t matter how you start. The entrance is just the brain tricking itself in to beginning; it’s just one part opening up a back door to let another part in. Step inside, find the vault and shovel as much of that flickering ore out in to the world as you can before the alarm goes off. The alarm is very sensitive. If you start to worry about how heavy these bags are and slow down, the alarm goes off. If you get distracted and just wander around staring at the walls, the alarm goes off. If you try to heft too much ore at once, the alarm goes off. And, most important, if you start thinking about how you’ll spend all these glorious riches before you’ve left the bank, the alarm goes off and you get carted off to jail. Grab and go. The rest is for later.

Zuzu continues to suffer. Now she’s utterly still, twisted all the way around in a sort of tail-chase yoga move - frozen in a little brindle pretzel so as to delicately sniff her own ass. This looks to me as though it would be easier just sitting down, but then I’m not really in a position to give ass-sniffing advice. Maybe this pose is an ancient, higher-order sniffing technique that all dogs aspire to. Maybe she’s been practicing. Maybe - and now we’re doing our own circling - the whole sneezing routine was just the only way she could think of to get to the sniffing.

Me, well, I’ll just stand back and take notes.