Fifth Journey Day 72: The Dog That Marked the Sentence

Date: July 19, 2025
Location: Telavi, Georgia

I spent the morning under the mulberry tree in the courtyard. It's a short, wide tree with branches that look like old elbows, and its leaves rustle gently all day. I brought out a small sketchbook, but I didn't draw right away. I let the paper rest open beside me and watched what landed on it: a dried petal, a bit of thread, and a curled leaf that drifted down without any fanfare. Two small ants moved in a coordinated way across the page, disappearing before I could follow them.

It felt like the first time in weeks that I let myself relax without any goals. The road from Batumi to Kutaisi to here has been steady, but I have been restless, always looking ahead to the next step. Today, that feeling has gone away. I wasn't trying to interpret it. I just noticed how light passed through the leaves and how the shadow of a falling berry stretched and then disappeared on the page. Each mark I made felt like it was happening a little bit off to the side of my attention.

In the distance, I could hear conversations from the market square. They were faint and fragmented, like overhearing words through water. At one point, a man walked past with a dog. He nodded once, not smiling but not unfriendly, and the dog paused to sniff the edge of my shoe, then moved on. It felt like a tiny dot — not important, but remembered.

I didn't go anywhere else today. I didn't need to. Something changed, but it was hard to tell exactly what. It was as if I had stopped breathing, even though I wasn't aware of it. The sketch is simple, with mostly empty space. But the lines ended up looking a bit softer than I had planned, and maybe that's what made the day feel so full.