Very likely a certain amount of warp has occurred in mine since, however.

From having been leaning for so many years rather than being hung, that would be.

Well, and a number of them had never been framed, either.

Then again, when I say all of my paintings I am speaking only about the paintings I had not sold, naturally.

Though in fact some few were in group shows, or out on loan, also.

One of those I saw by sheer chance when I was in Rome, as a matter of fact.

Actually I had almost forgotten about it. And then in the window of a municipal gallery on a street near the Via Vittorio Veneto, there was my name on a poster.

To tell the truth, it was Louise Nevelson's name that caught my eye first. But still.

Sitting in an automobile with English license plates and a right-hand drive, only a day after that, I watched the Piazza Navona fill up with snow, which must surely be rare.

Early in the Renaissance, although also in Rome, Brunelleschi and Donatello went about measuring ruins with such industry that people believed they were mad.

But after that Brunelleschi returned home to Florence and put up the largest dome since antiquity.

Well, this being one of the reasons they named it the Renaissance, obviously.

It was Giotto who built the beautiful campanile next door to that same cathedral.

Once, being asked to submit a sample of his work, what Giotto submitted was a circle.

Well, the point being that it was a perfect circle.

And that Giotto had painted it freehand.

When my father died, less than a year after my mother, I came upon that same tiny mirror in a drawer full of old snapshots.

An authentic snow falls in Rome no more than once every seventy years or so, as a matter of fact.

Which is approximately how often the Arno overflows its banks too, at Florence. Though perhaps there is no connection there.

Yet it is not impossible that people like Leonardo da Vinci or Andrea del Sarto or Taddeo Gaddi went through their entire lives without ever watching boys throw snowballs.

Had they been born somewhat later they could have seen Bruegel's paintings of youngsters doing that, at least.

I happen to believe the story about Giotto and the circle, by the way. Certain stories being gratifying to believe.

I also believe I met William Gaddis once. He did not look Italian.

Conversely I do not believe one word of what I wrote, a few lines ago, about Leonardo da Vinci and Andrea del Sarto and Taddeo Gaddi never seeing snow, which was ridiculous.

Nor can I remember, any longer, if I happened onto the poster with my name on it before or after I saw the cat at the Colosseum.

The cat at the Colosseum was orange, if I have not indicated, and had lost an eye.

In fact it was hardly your most appealing cat, for all that I was so anxious to see it again.

Simon had a cat, once. Which we could never seem to decide on a name for.

Cat, being all we ever called it.

Here, when the snows come, the trees write a strange calligraphy against the whiteness. The sky itself is often white, and the dunes are hidden, and the beach is white down to the water's edge, as well.

In a manner of speaking almost everything I am able to see, then, is like that nine-foot canvas of mine, with its opaque four white coats of gesso.

Now and again I build fires along the beach, however.

Well, autumns, or in early spring, I am most apt to do that.

Once, after doing that, I tore the pages out of a book and lighted those too, tossing each page into the breeze to see if the breeze might make it fly.

Most of the pages fell right next to me.

The book was a life of Brahms, which had been standing askew on one of the shelves here and which the dampness had left permanently misshapen. Although it had been printed on extraordinarily cheap paper to begin with.

When I say that I sometimes hear music in my head, incidentally, I often even know whose voice I am hearing, if the music is vocal music.

I do not remember who it was yesterday for The Alto Rhapsody, however.

I had not read the life of Brahms. But I do believe there is one book in this house which I did read, since I came.

As a matter of fact one could say two books, since it was a two-volume edition of the ancient Greek plays.

Although where I actually read that book was in the other house, farther down the beach, which I burned to the ground. The only book I have looked into in this house is an atlas, wishing to remind myself where Savona is.

As a matter of fact I did that not ten minutes ago, when I decided to bring the painting of the house back out here.

Which I now cannot be positive is a painting of this house, or of a house that is simply very much like this house.

The atlas was on a shelf directly behind where the painting had been leaning.

And directly beside a life of Brahms, printed on extraordinarily cheap paper and standing askew in such a way that it has become permanently misshapen.

Presumably it was another book altogether, from which I tore the pages and set fire to them, in wishing to simulate a seagull.

Unless of course there were two lives of Brahms in this house, both printed on cheap paper and both ruined by dampness.

Kathleen Ferrier is who was singing The Alto Rhapsody.

I assume I do not have to explain that any version of any music that comes into my head would be the version I was once most familiar with.

In SoHo, my recording of The Alto Rhapsody was an old Kathleen Ferrier recording.

And now that strand of tape is scratching at the window in the next room again, again sounding like a cat.

One does not name a seagull.

Once, when I was listening to myself read the Greek plays out loud, certain of the lines sounded as if they had been written under the influence of William Shakespeare.

One had to be quite perplexed as to how Aeschylus or Euripides might have read Shakespeare.

I did remember an anecdote, about some other Greek author, who had remarked that if he could be positive of a life after death he would happily hang himself to see Euripides. Basically this did not seem relevant, however.

Finally it occurred to me that the translator had no doubt read Shakespeare.

Normally I would not consider that a memorable insight, except for the fact that I was otherwise undeniably mad at the time when I read the plays.

As a matter of fact I only now realize that I may not have been cooking after all, when I burned that other house to the ground, but may well have burned it in the process of dropping the pages of The Trojan Women into the fire after I had finished reading their reverse sides.

Conversely I have no idea why I would have stated that it was a life of Brahms I had set fire to, out on the beach, when it was not ten minutes earlier that I had noticed the life of Brahms next to the atlas behind where the painting was.

Certain questions would appear unanswerable.

Such as, in addition, what my father may have thought about, looking through old snapshots and then looking into the mirror that had been beside my mother's bed.

Or whether one would have ever arrived at the castle or not, had one continued to follow that same road.

Well, in that case doubtless there was ultimately a cutoff.

To the castle, a sign must have said.

In a Jeep, one could have maneuvered directly up the hillside, instead of following the road.

Meanwhile one does not spend any time viewing castles in La Mancha without being reminded of Don Quixote also, of course.

Any more than one can spend time in Toledo without being reminded of El Greco, even if it happens that El Greco was not Spanish.

All too often one hears of him spoken of as if he were, however.

The famous Spanish artists such as Velazquez or Zurbaran or El Greco, being the sort of thing that one hears.

One hardly ever hears of him being spoken of as a Greek, on the other hand.

The famous Greek artists such as Phidias or Theophanes the Greek or El Greco, being the sort of thing that one almost never hears.

Yet it is not beyond imagining that El Greco was even directly descended from some of those other Greeks, when one stops to think about it.

Surely it would have been easy to lose track, in so many years. But who is to say that it might not go back even farther than that, to somebody like Achilles, why not?

I am almost certain that Helen had at least one child, at any rate.

Now the painting does appear to be of this house.

As a matter of fact there also appears to be somebody at the very window, upstairs, from which I watch the sunset.

I had not noticed her at all, before this.

If it is a she. The brushwork is fairly abstract, at that point, so that there is little more than a hint of anybody, really.

Still, it is interesting to speculate suddenly about just who might be lurking at my bedroom window while I am typing down here right below.

Well, and on the wall just above and to the side of me, at the same time.

All of this being merely in a manner of speaking, of course.

Although I have also just closed my eyes, and so could additionally say that for the moment the person was not only both upstairs and on the wall, but in my head as well.

Were I to walk outside to where I can see the window, and do the same thing all over again, the arrangement could become much more complicated than that.

For that matter I have only now noticed something else in the painting.

The door that I generally use, coming and going from the front deck, is open.

Not two minutes ago, I happen to have closed that same door.

Obviously no action of my own, such as that, changes anything in the painting.

Nonetheless I have again just closed my eyes, trying to see if I could imagine the painting with the door to the deck closed.

I was not able to close the door to the deck in the version of the painting in my head.

Had I any pigments, I could paint it closed in the painting itself, should this begin to trouble me seriously.

There are no painting materials in this house.

Unquestionably there would have had to be all sorts of such materials here at one time, however.

Well, with the exception of those that she carried to the dunes, where else would the painter have deposited them?

Now I have made the painter a she, also. Doubtless because of my continued sense of it being a she at the window.

But in either case one may still assume that there must be additional painting materials inside of the house in the painting, even if one cannot see any of them in the painting itself.

As a matter of fact it is no less possible that there are additional people inside of the house as well, above and beyond the woman at my window.

Then again, very likely the others could be at the beach, since it is late on a summer afternoon in the canvas, although no later than four o'clock.

So that next one is forced to wonder why the woman at the window did not go to the beach herself, for that matter.

Although on second thought I have decided that the woman may well be a child.

So that perhaps she had been made to remain at home as a punishment, after having misbehaved.