Rain has re-entered my life. First the unusual cloudy days, many including at least a few raindrops, before I left New Mexico for Minnesota a week ago. Since then more days than not with fairly steady rainfall. I imagined under these conditions I would be paying serious attention to writing both in my blogs and in massive note taking for everything I want to say about ‘time and place’ prior to and during the Big15Trip.
I’ve been begging, longing, crying, hoping, damn-close-to-praying for rain to inspire me. It’s here. I’m not inspired. Lazy. Accomplishing nothing. A week’s vacation. Okay, I can justify that but as of tomorrow morning it is time to move on. Think. Create. And so forth.
Actually I have accomplished something. The Village Bookstore in Grand Rapids is excellent—as good a small town bookstore as I’ve seen anywhere. It is especially on top of Scandinavian crime fiction so naturally I would be a fan. Marsha and I made our first shopping foray to downtown GR yesterday and I managed to stop by the bookstore for a quick look about and emerged with a few new ‘Nordic noirs’ in hand. I also picked up Book Four of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle.
Seriously, Knausgaard is as brilliant as the critics claim. “Not since James Joyce, has anyone written something this important…” a reviewer says. Since I’ve never been able to read Joyce beyond some required college excerpts I cannot attest to that—but I can tell you Knausgaard is most readable and original and addictive. Preparing me for my weeks coming up in Norway.
In fact in a little while we are practicing a time honored Scandinavian tradition. Company is coming over for cake and coffee. Trust me when I say it doesn’t get any more Norwegian than that.