nothing at all

April 26, 2002

Today's Reading
Red Poppies by Alai

This Year's Reading
2002 Book List

Today's Starting Pitcher
John Burkitt

I have nothing at all to say. It isn't just that I can't write. There are no thoughts in my head to write about. I feel dull. It's not that my life is dull. It's not. There's plenty going on, some of it even vaguely interesting. It's that my wits are dull. Not sharp. Like a blunt knife. Not capable of cutting much. Cutting much insight. Can you cut insight? Maybe you cut the hole that lets the insight in. I'm tired and dull. I can't write. I mean in general, not just tonight. I look at recent entries, some of which have interesting topics, and notice how dull they are. A better writer and a better person, where better means having more insight and inclination toward self-disclosure, could have made an interesting story out of my not quite panic attack at the FurrBall - human interest, confessional stuff. Could've been interesting. A better writer could have made more out of the history of postcards and kids with whooping cough in early 20th century Newburyport. A better writer ... whatever...

By the way, according to La Madre I am taller than Robert Reich. She shook hands with him at a campaign rally and confirmed this. Other questions remain unanswerable. After all, since we know neither the duration of my lifetime nor that of the Big Dig, it is impossible to draw any conclusion about which will finish first. The point of the two-man luge and the expiration date on Twinkies is unknowable. Whether Massachusetts matters ceased to be a meaningful question sometime in the late 19th century, around the time Massachusetts ceased to matter. At least Pedro Martinez seems to be back in the groove.

Tonight when I was driving through Andover on the way to the supermarket an opening in the clouds focused the low early evening sunlight on a white church steeple, a red brick mill building smokestack, and a few white pines. The entire history of Massachusetts in one stunning visual image and me without a camera to capture it! So much depends on a red brick smokestack beside the white steeple...

Last night's snow was still around this morning too. I had to scrape it off the windshield. A patch of violets in a neighbors yard was completely squashed down to the ground and covered with a frozen crust. Tonight the violets were back up all purple and perky as if the snow had never happened.

There ought to be some white chickens glazed with rain around here somewhere...