For some reason this story reminds me of something, even though I cannot remember what it reminds me of.

Telemachus is the little boy's name, by the way. Although I believe I mentioned this a good many pages ago.

The name of the friend for whom Achilles weeps is Patroclus, which on the other hand I am quite certain I did leave out.

My last lover was named Lucien. I find it interesting that I have not included the name of a single one of my lovers in any of these pages, either.

Possibly those paintings by Tiepolo are in the Hermitage, at which I spent several days before leaving for home across Russia in the opposite direction.

As a matter of fact they are in Milan, where I saw them on the very day when I was so saddened by The Last Supper.

Where I watched the sunsets on that return trip, naturally, was more often than not in my rearview mirror.

Which would have made them images of sunsets rather than sunsets, come to think about it. And with the left side being the right, or vice versa, although one was doubtless less conscious of this with sunsets than one would have been with Michelangelo's notebooks.

Doubtless I was much more interested in keeping a weather eye out for Anna Karenina in either case, since I was naturally still looking, at the time.

Have I mentioned looking in Amsterdam, New York, or in Syracuse, or in Toledo, Ohio?

Meanwhile I have no idea why rearview mirrors should remind me that I was feeling a certain depression, yesterday.

In fact I have perhaps omitted to indicate that that was yesterday.

Last evening's sunset had a certain stillness about it, as if Piero della Francesca had done the color.

What I woke up to this morning were the lilacs, breathing them all over the house.

Later, I washed myself with some of the water I had brought in from the spring.

I am still wearing the underpants I wore yesterday, however.

This is because even though I went to the spring twice, on both trips I walked right past my laundry, which is spread across bushes.

To tell the truth, I am still feeling a touch of that same depression, as well.

Possibly what I had been thinking about yesterday was the tiny, pocket sort of mirror that had been beside my mother's bed, although I do not remember having thought about that yesterday.

There is a distinction to be made between this sort of depression and the depression I generally felt while I was still doing all of that looking, by the way, the latter having been much more decidedly a kind of anxiety.

Although I believe I have noted that.

One day I appeared to have finally stopped looking, in any event.

At the intersection of Anna Akhmatova Street and Rodion Romanovitch Raskolnikov Mews, perhaps this was.

Doubtless it would have been around that same time that I stopped reading out loud, also. Or in any case surely tearing out pages after having finished their reverse sides, so as to be able to drop them into the fire.

What I did later, with the pages from the life of Brahms, was to toss those into the breeze in the hope that the ash might take flight.

In Cadiz, where he was once writing his poems while living for a certain period near water, Marco Antonio Montes de Oca had a seagull which came to his window each morning, to be fed.

It was Lucien, in fact, who told me that. Lucien was once acquainted with William Gaddis also, I believe.

Though perhaps it was William Gaddis who lived for a certain period near water in Cadiz, and had a pet seagull.

The cat in the Colosseum was black, I am next to positive, and held up one paw as if it had hurt itself.

Nothing that I am writing in these moments should cause me to continue to feel depressed, I do not believe.

Although I am perhaps just enough disturbed by these underpants to have let that become a sort of nuisance factor.

I have just gone out for fresh underpants.

What I more exactly did was change while I was out there. There is always something pleasurable about changing into garments that are still warm from the sun.

Which will perhaps explain why I again left everything else on the bushes, in fact.

Then again, some of it may well remain there indefinitely, since I generally wear nothing at all, summers.

Once, I actually left out certain items which became frozen, when an early frost surprised me.

By the time I remembered to go for them, I was able to stand several of my wraparound denim skirts upright on the ground.

Skirt sculptures, one might have considered them.

And there can be no doubt at all that I had gotten rid of my anxiety by then, since I was even able to be amused by the concept.

Apparently, one day I had been looking and then one day I was not, as I have said.

Although very likely it was hardly that simple either.

Doubtless I had not even realized that anything had changed, for some time.

For some time I have been watching the sun go down every evening without anxiety, is perhaps what I finally one evening remembered to think.

Or, the eternal silence of these infinite spaces no longer makes me feel like Pascal.

I doubt very seriously that I thought that.

Sculpture is the art of taking away superfluous material, Leonardo once said, if that is at all relevant?

Although it was not Leonardo who said it but was Michelangelo.

And on third thought I believe that Leonardo did not put snow into one of his paintings after all. Certain whitish rocks in mist, were what I had had in mind.

Quite possibly Tiepolo did not paint either of those two paintings either, now that I think about it, although in this instance all I mean is that Tiepolo had a great many assistants in his workshop, and so may have done no more than the preliminary sketches.

Though as a matter of fact he also did, or did not, do a painting of Agamemnon sacrificing poor Iphigenia to raise winds for the Greek ships.

Painting is not my trade, is another thing that Michelangelo once said. When he said this was when a pope told him that the Sistine Chapel might look more agreeable with some pictures up on top.

Perhaps this was the same pope who once offered Michelangelo his chair, out of respect. This was a very significant moment in the history of art, since nothing of the sort had ever happened with an artist before.

I serve him who pays me, is something that Leonardo did say instead of Michelangelo, on the other hand. Doubtless there is a way in which this moment had its significance in the history of art, as well.

Actually, Tintoretto once threatened to shoot a critic with a gun, which many artists would have perhaps felt was a more significant moment than both of those put together.

And possibly it was only one of the Medici, who let Michelangelo sit down. Still, one would be pleased if the pope was not the same pope who made people burn Sappho's poems.

When I state that any of these things were done or said, incidentally, what I more truthfully mean is that they were alleged to have been done or said, of course.

As it was similarly alleged that Giotto once painted a perfect circle freehand.

Although I happen to believe it categorically about the circle, most of such tales being harmless enough to believe in any event.

Well, and I also see no reason not to believe that Piero di Cosimo would hide under a table when there was lightning. Or that Hugo van der Goes was not able to paint religious paintings in a church unless friars sang psalms to keep him from sobbing all day.

Piero di Cosimo is not to be confused with yesterday's sunset, by the way, which was a Piero della Francesca, nor is Hugo van der Goes to be confused with Rogier van der Weyden, whose Descent from the Cross is so badly lighted at the Prado.

Well, nor with Vincent Van Gogh, whose sunset was some days before Piero's.

Which symphony is it, by Shostakovitch, in which one can practically hear the tanks coming off the assembly line?

In any event all that any of these stories would appear to add up to, one suspects, is that many more people in this world than one's self were never able to shed certain baggage.

Surely walking halfway across Naples to add one brushstroke to a wall is a form of baggage itself.

Doubtless cutting off one's ear is one too, if paradoxically.

Well, as is eating one's lunch every day at the Eiffel Tower. Or even lurking at windows.

Nonetheless, what would appear to remain the case on my own part is that one day I had baggage and then one day I did not.

Although very likely it was hardly that simple either.

Accouterments, I did get rid of. Things.

Conversely I can even now still call to mind the last four digits of Lucien's telephone number from all of those years ago.

Or recite the several rumors about Achilles and Patroclus having been more than just dear friends.

In fact I have just even quoted Friedrich Nietzsche.

Actually, it was almost an hour ago when I quoted Friedrich Nietzsche, who was really Pascal.

Where I have been was at the spring again. This time I decided I may as well bring in everything.

Nor am I any longer depressed, incidentally, which I now understand that I had not been to begin with, having only been out of sorts.

Which is to say that I had changed into those fresh underpants perhaps fifteen minutes earlier than I ought to have, having now had to change again, having just gotten my period.

I have no intention of looking back to see what I wrote about inconsequential perplexities now and again becoming the fundamental mood of existence. Or about certain unanswerable questions becoming answerable.

Oh, well.

At any rate everything that had been washed is now in my upstairs bedroom.

For a moment or two, before I came back down, I looked out of the rear window.

I do not often look out of that one, which is not the one from which I watch the sun go down.

What I was looking at was the other house, which is deep in the woods some distance from here.

I do not believe I have ever mentioned the other house.

What I may have mentioned are houses in general, along the beach, but such a generalization would not have included this house, this house being nowhere near the water.

All one can see of it from that upper rear window is a corner of its roof.

In fact I was not aware of the other house at all, when I first came to this one.

Once I did become aware of it, I understood that there would also have to be a road leading to it from somewhere, of course.

Yet for the life of me I was not able to locate the road, and for the longest time.

Looking for it, what I did first was drive the pickup truck along the road one takes to the town, turning off at every other road I came to.

Every one of those roads led to a house which was on the beach, however, and as I have said, this house is not on the beach.

I should perhaps add that when I say I followed the road one takes to the town, there is a manner of speaking in which I was not doing that at all.

The road one takes to the town being naturally also the road one takes away from the town, and it is in that opposite direction that the house can be seen from my upper rear window.

Possibly I did not really need to make that distinction.

In any case my failure to locate the road eventually began to become a wholly new sort of perplexity in my existence.

Unquestionably there has got to be a road leading to that house, I more than once said to myself.

Still, no matter how many times I drove back and forth, I was not able to locate it.

One morning I finally determined to make a major project out of doing so, for all that I was convinced I had put an end to such things as major projects.

Today I am going to locate the road leading to that house no matter what, was what I finally determined.

How I had been looking before this was in the pickup truck, as I have said. How I decided to do so that morning was by walking directly through the woods to the house.

And naturally by this identical procedure I will have also walked directly to the road, being what I obviously now had in mind.