Friday night

...before I tell you about Friday night, I need to amend what I meant to say Thursday morning about Gertrude Stein, and didn't say for some reason: that she's very difficult to read but that reading her makes me want to be a better writer. There, I've said it and can now move on to Saturday morning under the auspices of Friday night.

There's no tv in the cabin. Well there is a tv, an old Toshiba, but no cable so no tv.

There's a 3x5 bin of $5 DVD's at the Wal-Mart in Cody I like to shop when I'm in town. If I reach down deep enough and am willing to spend some time hunting, I can usually find a movie of interest. No Fellini in there, but I've found Kubrick and Hitchcock and a collectors edition of 'Bullitt.'

If I were making movie about Wal-Mart I'd start at the DVD bin. There's always a crowd there, 2 or 3 home-schooled kids, a geezer in coveralls, a truck driver in camo, reaching down into the movie darkness, coming up with Rocky III or The Centurion or the Steven Seagall collection, and going home happy.

Because it's impossible, it's great fun to try to get to the bottom of the bin. I've come close but never quite made it, the DVD's down there are unwieldy, elusive. Just when I think I have hold on what might be a hidden treasure, a classic, a big pile of the lesser DVD's slide over my arm and cause me to lose hold.

Last night I took away "Pride and Prejudice" starring Keira Knightley, and Scorsese's "The Departed." $10.

Then I went to dinner at the 8th St. Bistro, the hot new restaurant in Cody in the new Best Western motel. I had a martini, then a steak and took a picture of the view from my table.

Driving home late at night up the North Fork in the huge darkness that is upstate Wyoming, I begin to question the great need I have for images that are made of something other than words.