suspicious neatness
spongelike ramshackle craftless
continuously vile

Adapted from the complete first sentence of Jim Harrison’s Wolf: A False Memoir.

The sentence describes upper lower Michigan as well as upper Michigan.

The sentence, one long sentence, the opening sentence of the Wolf, is two pages long.

Mr. Harrison admitted he did it that way because he could.

The sentence reads:

You could travel west out of Reed City, a small county seat in an unfertile valley with a small yellow brick courthouse and a plugged cannon on its lawn next to a marble slab with the names of the World War One and Two dead inscribed in gold and the not dead plainly inscribed with the suspicious neatness of cemetery script, those who served, farther west through fifty miles of pine barrens dotted with small farm settlements often of less than thirty people, or merely a grocery store and gas station adjoined by a shabby aluminum trailer or a basement house with the first and perhaps second stories awaiting more prosperous times, the stores themselves with little and aged stock — lunch meat, bologna pickled in a jar, Polish sausage, tinned foods covered with dust, plaquettes of fish lures, mosquito repellent in aerosol cans, live bait and a pop cooler outside the door — but not many of these — a narrow road through mixed conifers, cedar and jack pine, some stunted scrub oak, birch, and the short-lived poplar, a pulp tree usually living less than twenty years and clotting the woods floor with its rotting trunks and branches, and west through the low pelvic mysteries of swamps divided invisibly from the air by interlocking creeks and small rivers, made unbearable in spring and summer by mosquitoes and black flies, swamps dank with brackish water and pools of green slime, small knolls of fern, bog marshes of sphagnum, spongelike and tortuous to the human foot and bordered by impenetrable tamarack thickets: in short a land with no appreciable history and a continuously vile climate, lumbered off for a hundred years with few traces of the grand white pine which once covered it, an occasional charred almost petrified stump four feet in diameter, evidence of trees which rose nearly two hundred feet and covered the northern half of the state and the Upper Peninsula, razed with truly insolent completeness by the lumber barons after the Civil War with all the money going to the cities of the south — Saginaw, Lansing, Detroit — and east to Boston and New York; and the houses, even the large farmhouses on reasonably good land, sloppily built, ramshackle and craftless compared to Massachusetts or Vermont; west to Lake Michigan then to turn north along its coast to the Straits of Mackinac, cross the mammoth bridge, travel west another three hundred miles through the sparsely populated Upper Peninsula and then north again into the comparatively vast, the peopleless Huron Mountains.

From Wolf : a False Memoir by Jim Harrison, (1937-2016) New York : Dell, 1981

the quality of
mercy not strain’d droppeth as
heaven’s gentle rain

The quality of mercy is not strain’d.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
‘Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The thronèd monarch better than his crown.
His scepter shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptered sway.
It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings;
It is an attribute to God Himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this:
That in the course of justice none of us
Should see salvation. We do pray for mercy,
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render

William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (Act 4, Scene 1).

Watching the Andy Griffith show the other night, I watched as Andy and Barney rescue a pack of dogs from a thunder storm.

When they get back, Andy says to Barney, “Anyway, you did a good thing, Barn. You did a cardinal act of mercy.”

And Barney replies, “The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven.”

Andy stares at Barney with that big eyed – open mouth Andy stare.

Barney looks him back and says, “You’re not talking to a jerk, you know!”

Big Bill visits Mayberry.

Just as like a gentle rain that droppeth from heaven.

the silence for me
is more important than words
give space to silence

Give space to silence.

I liked that.

I like that a lot.

It comes from a quote from film maker, Gianfranco Rosi.

Mr. Rosi was interviewed about his documentary on the life of Pope Francis, Viaggio: The Travels of Pope Francis.

The interviewer, Radheyan Simonpillai, writes, “A lot is said during the quiet moments in Gianfranco Rosi’s In Viaggio: The Travels of Pope Francis, when the holy figure takes a pause from giving hopeful or apologetic speeches to stare into the abyss, lost in his own thoughts and prayers.

Those are opportunities for Rosi, the documentary film-maker behind Fire at Sea and Notturno, to invite the audience into contemplation and leave room for skepticism and ambivalence.”

Then Mr. Simonpillai quotes Mr. Rosi:

“The silence for me is more important than the notes itself.”

“My own interpretation as a film-maker is to give space to silence.“

“Sometimes words aren’t even enough.”

Give space to silence.

Sometimes words aren’t even enough.

Sometimes …

Give space to silence.

So many times.

Words aren’t even enough.

Give space to silence.

books are like jello
there is always room for more
and I can’t change that

I am at this point in my life where I am trying to divest myself of earthly belongings.

For me, for the most part, that means one thing.

Books.

My first job out of high school was in a bookstore.

I stayed with that bookstore as a bookseller, assistant manager and manager up to a custom guy-in-charge name tag that got me trouble.

From the bookstore, I went to work for the libraries.

I word it like that as I was the only person on the staff of both the Grand Rapids Public Library and the Kent County Public Library at the same time.

Together it kind made up for one full time job.

From the libraries I went to work for a publisher.

At the publisher I learned HTML that I turned into a job in the online news business.

Always working with words.

Always looking for books.

Always reading.

Always acquiring more and more books.

Books, for me, were like jello and there was always room for more.

While there might be room for even more, I had quite the personal library.

I claimed I could pick any book off my shelf and not only tell you what the book was about, but I how I GOT THE BOOK.

All those phrases you hear when someone describes their personal book collection and their relationship to those books, well, I said them.

Then I started moving.

First I just moved around to different locations in Grand Rapids, Michigan where I lived.

Each time I moved, there were more books to move.

And I moved them.

Thinking all the time of the old joke of the movers and the old lady with all the books.

The movers finally ask why she didn’t read them before she moved.

Then came the move to Atlanta.

I made some hard choices and selected maybe my favorite, got to have, 500 books or so.

About 3000 were left behind.

Then once we down here in the southland, there came the move into an apartment.

I think I went down to my got-to-have top 100 books.

I was choosing favorite authors.

The books of Jim Harrison, CS Forester and Bruce Catton all made the cut along with some favorites and a few other books kept for sentimental reasons.

I was down to 6 shelves of books.

What with e books and e readers and e check out at libraries there weren’t any other books I felt I would need.

I can get almost anything ever printed anywhere in front of my eyes so I was good.

But I keep going to bookstores.

I keep going to places with books for sale.

Regardless of any and all changes in space and place in my life, this voice inside me tells me there is always room for more books.

Why can’t I learn.

But then what would I learn?

That books aren’t like jello?

There isn’t always room for more?

I know that’s a lie so I can’t get myself to even say it let alone believe it.

Books are like jello and there always room for more and I can’t change that.

This is where I was mentally last Saturday.

My wife and I went to the Beaufort County Library.

And, doggone it, right inside the front door are the books cases for the Friends of the Library sale.

Walk on past, you say.

Well, easier said than done.

And besides no harm no foul, I rarely see anything on these shelves that I have to have.

Most of the time.

Then I saw them.

The multi volume set of Shelby Foote’s History of the Civil.

In mint condition.

Like new if maybe not, new.

For sure never read after someone got the set as a gift, I am sure.

I looked at the set for a minute.

I picked one up.

In that moment I experienced nothing less that pure unadulterated covetness.

I had to own it.

The volume had a red dot sticker on the spine.

I looked at the sign.

Red Dot books were $1.

So I know what you are thinking.

What’s the big deal?

Admit it.

That is what you are thinking.

Mr. Foote’s History of the Civil War is in three volumes so we are talking three large paperback books and three bucks.

Big deal.

Well …

See …

This was the special illustrated edition.

This was the special illustrated edition of Shelby Foote’s History of the Civil War.

This was the special illustrated edition of Shelby Foote’s History of the Civil War in 14 hard cover volumes.

Why did I need these books?

Who in their right mind needs these books?

I guess that’s where I lost the argument as no one would ever say I am ever in a right mind.

I just can’t help myself.

But I showed restraint.

I put the book back down on the stack.

That beautiful stack of beautiful books.

Don’t need them, I said to myself.

Then myself says to me … YOU ARE GOING TO ARGUE OVER $14?

And how could I argue with that.

Maybe it was that it was the complete set of all 14 books.

I had seen this set before in a used bookstore but with only 12 of the 14.

Now all 14 were in front of me.

When I think of complete sets of books like this I always think of the Alfred Hitchcock movie Read Window with Jimmy Stewart.

I think of the line when Stewarts friend the cop describes what would happen if he went before a Judge with a case based on Stewart’s version of what happened.

The cop tells Stewart, “… He’d throw the New York State Penal Code right in my face … and it’s six volumes.”

Anyway my wife comes up and asks if I found anything.

“Well,” I said, “pointing, this set …”

“THIS SET!”, she says.

Where are going to put that was her first thought.

Her second thought was to ask if the Friends of the Library took a debit card.

When we were told no they did not, my wife says maybe if they will hold them until Monday, she will get some cash when she is out and about.

My dear wife.

It really is nice when your wife is also your best friend.

I just got back from the library.

Long story short, I have to find a place to put these 14 books.

They will fit in somewhere.

Books are like jello.

There is always room for more.