There would appear to be no tapes, however.
Once, changing vehicles beside some tennis courts at Bayonne, in France, I turned an ignition key and found myself hearing the Four Serious Songs,by Brahms.
Though I am possibly thinking about the Four Last Songs,by Richard Strauss.
In either event it was not Kathleen Ferrier singing.
Actually, a fairly high percentage of the vehicles that one comes upon will have tape decks, many still set to the on position.
Rarely would it occur to me to give this any attention, however.
Obviously, one's chief interest at such moments would concern whether the battery on hand still functioned.
Assuming one had already determined that there was a key in the vehicle, and gasoline.
Kirsten Flagstad was singing, at Bayonne. Which was in fact Bordeaux.
To tell the truth, one was generally pleased enough that a car was moving so as to have driven some distance before noticing whether a tape deck was playing or not.
Or at least to have gotten clear of whatever obstacles had made it necessary to switch vehicles to begin with.
Often, bridges caused such switching. One solitary nuisance car can render your average bridge impassable.
For some years I normally troubled to transfer my baggage from one vehicle to the next, as well. On certain trips I even thought to carry along a hand truck.
When I was living at the Metropolitan I towed clear a number of my access routes, finally.
Well, or sometimes made use of a Land Rover, and came or went directly across the lawns in Central Park.
There is no longer any problem in regard to my husband's name, by the way. Even if I never saw him again, once we separated after Simon died.
As a matter of fact there is a hand truck in the basement of this house.
It is not one of my own, since I rarely make use of such contrivances any longer. Rather it was there when I came.
There are eight or nine cartons of books in the basement also, in addition to the many books in the various rooms up here.
The hand truck is badly rusted, as are the several bicycles.
The basement is even more damp than the remainder of the house. I leave that door closed.
The entrance to the basement is at the rear of the house, and below a sandy embankment, so that one does not see that in the painting.
The perspective in the painting having been taken from out in front, if I have not indicated that.
There are several baseballs in the basement also, on a ledge.
There is also a lawnmower, although there is only one exceedingly small patch of grass, at one side of the house, that I can imagine ever having been mowed.
That patch, on the other hand, does appear to be discernible in the painting.
I can see now that it had, in fact, been mowed at the time when the painter painted it.
The things one tardily becomes aware of.
Which reminds me that I am now convinced that the sentence that came into my head yesterday, or the day before yesterday, about wandering through an endless nothingness, was written by Friedrich Nietzsche.
Even if I am equally convinced that I have never read a single word written by Friedrich Nietzsche.
I do believe that I once read Wuthering Heights,however, which I mention because all that I seem able to remember about it is that people are continually looking in or out of windows.
The book called the Penseeswas written by Pascal, by the way.
I also believe I have not indicated that this is another day of typing, which is why I expressed hesitation as to whether quoting Friedrich Nietzsche had occurred yesterday or the day before yesterday.
I did not make any sort of note about where I stopped, simply leaving that sheet in the machine.
Possibly I stopped at the point where I came to the baseballs in the basement, since the topic of baseball has always bored me.
Afterward I went for a walk along the beach, as far as the other house, which burned.
Yesterday's sunset was a Vincent Van Gogh sunset, with a certain amount of anxiety in it.
Perhaps I am only thinking about streaks.
I have more than once wondered why the books in the basement are not upstairs with the others, actually.
There is space. Many of the shelves up here are half empty.
Although doubtless when I say they are half empty I should really be saying they are half filled, since presumably they were totally empty before somebody half filled them.
Then again it is not impossible that they were once filled completely, becoming half empty only when somebody removed half of the books to the basement.
I find this second possibility less likely than the first, although it is not utterly beyond consideration.
In either event the present state of the shelves is an explanation for why so many of the books in the house are tilted, or standing askew. And thus have become permanently misshapen.
Baseball When the Grass Was Realis actually the name of one of those, I believe.
In that case one is at least made halfway curious about the meaning of the title, I must admit.
Less than inordinately curious, baseball remaining baseball, but at least halfway curious.
As a matter of fact perhaps I will mow my own grass, which is undeniably real, even if it is inordinately overgrown.
I cannot mow the grass. Not with the lawnmower being as badly rusted as the hand truck and the bicycles.
I have other bicycles, actually.
One is doubtless beside the pickup truck. Another may be at the gas station, in the town.
There was a bicycle in the cul-de-sac beneath the Acropolis, come to think about it.
Perhaps the books in the basement are duplicate books.
Like the two lives of Brahms, that would be. Even if both of those would appear to have been upstairs.
There is nobody at the window in the painting of the house, by the way.
I have now concluded that what I believed to be a person is a shadow.
If it is not a shadow, it is perhaps a curtain.
As a matter of fact it could actually be nothing more than an attempt to imply depths, within the room.
Although in a manner of speaking all that is really in the window is burnt sienna pigment. And some yellow ochre.
In fact there is no window either, in that same manner of speaking, but only shape.
So that any few speculations I may have made about the person at the window would therefore now appear to be rendered meaningless, obviously.
Unless of course I subsequently become convinced that there is somebody at the window all over again.
I have put that badly.
What I intended to say was that I may possibly become newly convinced that there is somebody at the window, hardly that somebody who had been at the window has gone away but might come back.
In either case it remains a fact that no altered perception of my own, such as this one, changes anything in the painting.
So that perhaps my earlier speculations remain valid after all.
I have very little idea what I mean by that.
One can scarcely speculate about a person when there is no person to speculate about.
Yet there is no way of denying that one did make such speculations.
Two days ago, when I was hearing Kathleen Ferrier, what exactly was I hearing?
Yesterday, when I was speculating about a person at the window in the painting, what exactly was I speculating about?
I have just put the painting back into the room with the atlas and the life of Brahms.
As a matter of fact I have now also had another night's sleep.
I mention that, this time, only because in a manner of speaking one could now say that it has this quickly become the day after tomorrow.