#86

Wordsworth. "Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife." Yet I imagined, snug in gloves and jacket at the 8th Street laundromat, a catalogue (the epic sort) of what Stephen has read. Matched and countered by his Cranly's musical selection. The reader's aural visions; the hearer's florid phrases. There needn't be a preference. Each figure (DC calls them mere effects of prose) a cutting transplant. And the Asian woman at the bank of dryers? She pressed her hand aginst one of the machines' glass doors, and sounded (in complaint? surprise? communion?), not WaRM eNough.

Other ideas over coffee. Flaky brown croissant. Characters. Someone whose name is Goodman. And another, very fair. Andy calls her Polly, but her name is Lora. On Fairmount Ave? Remember: Ricki. A flyer from my radio show nabbed and hung abover her bed. Ample flesh, and not pretty. (Maybe call her Alexine?). But poetry fills her spacious room, and Titania calls in the evening. She can hear things said in Spenser. Pansies in her garden, so much love-in-idleness. Cats and strays that come.

Remember, to square means quarrel. And Cage, if read in sunlight, can be quite boring. I wonder... are we artists or are we men? There's that store: THE GOLDEN DOUGHNUT. And that other: NUTS TO YOU. I have socks upon the radiator drying after the wash. I have photographs from Erica's party, much too grainy on the screen. And I have a line from MND, taken out of context: "Bless thee, Bottom, bless thee. Thou art translated."