JJ the Dull.

I’m finding it impossible to write anything at the moment, and I’m not sure whether it’s because life itself is uneventful or because my perceptions are uncharacteristically dull.

I started writing a piece about hats with especial reference to little girls. Why is it, I began to ask, that if you put a hat on a little girl she suddenly becomes elevated from the merely adorable to the inexplicably magical? But it seemed trivial so I discontinued it.

I was going to embark on a little essay about the negative perceptions of Romania held by West Europeans during the cold war, how that negativity deepened after Romania first joined the EU, but how its star is now rising and how glad I am to see it. There’s something encouragingly unpretentious about Romania. The only national characteristic I’ve noticed so far in my limited personal experience has been the niceness of the people. (That’s if you exclude Vlad Tepes, of course, but he’s long gone so I think we can ignore him.) And then it all seemed too serious so I gave that one up as well.

Then there was the anticipated epilogue on The Turn of the Screw which I finished last night. The problem here is that, having waded laboriously through James’s prose style which often resembled thick porridge gone lumpy and mouldy, I found the ending rather sudden and anticlimactic. So why bother, I asked myself. (The plot is excellent, but parts of it desperately need re-writing in a language closer to readable English.)

In jotting these few inconsequential words I still feel dull and unfulfilled. And I’m getting those dreams again – the ones in which I find myself trapped in an uncomfortable situation but can’t find a way to get out of it. Maybe it’s because I sort of got lost in a wood yesterday (but only sort of; I worked out where I was and how to regain the path easily enough.) Or maybe it’s because my inbox is empty and nobody is talking to me through the medium of YouTube. (By an odd coincidence – or maybe it isn’t – the most recent replies I’ve had were rather nice and came from Romania.)

You know, the only activities which lift my spirits these days are walking alone around the Shire and watching videos of shuffle dancing and people taking the Jerusalema challenge. Where on earth is that spark I’ve been anticipating for what seems a very long time?