The Insatiable Gremlin of Guilt

IN SPITE of all my antipathy toward those who allow their inane chatter to spread across the Web and choke it like kudzu, over the past week I've nevertheless been occupied on and off with trying to think of something, anything, to post here. It wasn't that I was inundated with more pressing matters to attend to, though to some extent I was, but rather that there was no topic or event that compelled me to allot it more than a written sentence or two, most of which I simply passed on to Twitter and its 140-character limit. Either I'm growing terribly jaded or the past ten days have been entirely unprovocative.

On Friday I did have a brief, maybe twenty-minute exchange with a friend about Denis Johnson's Tree of Smoke, and about an hour afterward I considered the possibility of posting on the subject of how rare it is that I have satisfying discussions about books—good books, I mean, not the mass-market bestsellers on the Waterstone's 2-for-1 table—with anyone but my wife, and how sad that is, given that before we moved we were both inclined to wax romantic about the surfeit of quality cultural conversation to be had here in Hamburg, but I couldn't think of anything to say except for the few clauses I've just written, which, in case it needs pointing out, are neither insightful nor significant. I'd also intended to post some CD reviews, as I mentioned in my last post all those many days ago, yet I haven't found enough time to sit down and give any of the discs the listening they deserve, and as there are no deadlines for this little pet project of mine, there's no particularly good argument for haste. No deadlines, that is, except the insatiable gremlin of guilt who keeps nagging for content, content, even when I haven't anything worthwhile to give. Q.E.D.