Nothing to Say

 

Memorial Day Saturday and Sunday were busy at the bookstore. Memorial Day itself was rainy, and I stayed home, pretty sure that most weekenders would be getting an early start on returning home themselves. And mine this time was a true day off – no mowing, no weeding, no hauling bricks (for an ongoing project, most mornings six bricks at a time, in two buckets, uphill), and only short walks with Sunny Juliet. Relaxing, writing, reading. When I reached the last page of a classic noir novel, In a Lonely Place, by Dorothy B. Hughes, I turned for relief to Harlan Hubbard’s Payne Hollow. 

 

Noir fiction: dark, nihilistic, and violent. My question: Why does art bother to imitate this kind of life, when we have more than enough real-life dark, nihilistic violence? Oh, don’t bother to answer. It’s a challenge trying to get into the mind of compulsive murderers, etc., etc., blah-blah-blah. I’ll take Dostoevsky, thanks.

 

I’m rambling because I truly have nothing to say. My head is full of dark thoughts about the future of the world, and I don’t want to encourage myself in that direction. Better to think about the season’s first blooming buttercups (think: 'little frogs') and the progress I’m making with that brick project at home (think: the brick walk to my grandparents' outhouse, roofed by grape trellis along its length).

Northern Michigan is as lush and green as a jungle these days. (Don’t think of ticks.)