The Last Word On Nothing

Dateline: mid-January, 2020. Location: Baltimore, MD. Meterological conditions: first snow of the season, 1 inch max.

Early that evening, rumor apparently came of an imminent invasion. So the local militia began work on fortifications. They packed cold-certified plastic cubes with snow, then pushed the cubes of snow out and stacked them without reference to engineering principles. By now, most of the yard had been picked clean of snow. Fortifications were left unfinished because light was failing and the militia had to go home to bed.

The following morning, the militia did not initially reappear. But the militia’s junior auxiliary was out doing stuff I’m not clear what. I observed activities from behind a glass door. Though supervised, the auxiliary seemed to be operating without a plan. The littlest member showed me her mittens and said, “I have mittens,” then noticed that she had mittens and took them off, then took off her hat and coat and was working on her snowpants when her father intervened and began re-dressing her which took an oddly long time.

The middle-sized auxiliary member was sweeping up the rest of the snow by hand, and yelled at me through the door that she was cleaning the yard for me. She moved on to hand-sweeping the snow off my car. The littlest one was dressed again and tried to knock over the fortifications. When that didn’t work, she licked them.

The oldest auxiliary member pretended that the ice chunks from the sidewalk were snowballs and and threw them at the tree, then tried to talk his father into what would have been a lethal snowball fight. The middle one climbed up the fortifications and stood on top, looking around. I couldn’t hear what she was saying but it was probably, “Look upon me, ye mighty, and despair.”

The ice chunk fight never did happen and next I looked, the auxiliary had all gone home. Except for a fortification-top announcement, I can’t see that any strategic objectives were met.

Then the original militia came back out and had an ice chunk firefight. They weren’t hitting much, in fact, they didn’t seem to be aiming, just throwing stuff out of sheer warlust. One of them didn’t have mittens on and he had to take breaks to blow into his hands. They might have been joined by other warfighters, but they move so fast it’s hard to keep track.

The next time I looked, the battlefield was empty and all that remained was a snowless lawn, a half of a fortification, and a hat in the tree. Maybe battle is the wrong metaphor. Maybe it should have been a short circus, maybe a dance — anyway, something I could go out and see again when I got a little sad for not seeing it.

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Nobody’s better at this kind of thing than Pieter Breughel the Younger, this detail courtesy of Pieter Brueghel the Younger – artsandculture.google.com. The top photo is obviously by me.