I have been applying for HUD rent-assistance at (so far) the Temple Square Towers, and The Brig; likely, it is at the latter that I will "succeed." The intrusive, nay invasive, pre-rental questionaires have my panties in a knot, and my lip permanently curled. How fucking dare they "evaluate" my character. I am sick, angry, and no doubt unpleasant.
'Tany rate, succeeding at the Brig I shall be able to let myself and Friday in, and out, at any hour, at my good pleasure or whim. Necessary, if for nothing else, to keep the boy from freezing (and me too). Friday's part in this, simply, will be to help furnish the place, and to oblige me to pick up after myself. Doesn't sound like much, but I couldn't do it without him; and with a little more furniture, and a little more order around me, I daresay I could go on to some major life-structuring Projects, like: (for real) #1. Cracking that Greek tutorial, and getting onto some major Greek-learning. #2. Brushing up that complete Horace. #3. Proceeding somewhat more systematically with my reading of that 4-volume history of Italian literature. Stuff I'm really too distracted and imploded upon myself here at the Palace to carry through with.

And last night has been the first cold night in months. Not yet so cold as to blight the tomatoes, but definitely a two-blanketer. Have read, at Gloria's instance, a medium-depressing, but (bad science aside) quite correct little dystopia called 'A Short History of Progress,' by Ronald Wright. The bad science is our author's personal conviction, necessary for his thesis I fear, that Homines Neanderthalensis Sapiensque were same-species hominids; which leads him even to assert, contrary to what he must know, that the DNA evidence is inconclusive. 'Tain't. I have acquired, while walking with Friday yesterday, as the jetsam of a near-by yard-sale thrown onto the parking-strip, a tattered copy of Lin Yutang's 'From Pagan to Christian.' It's even more depressing than the short history. Likely, this afternoon to play the piano with Kristen. We did the fifth Brandenburg last time; this time I'd like to try the fourth and (already a favourite) the sixth. Vedremo. But back to Mr. Wright, and what I think he, of all people, is afraid to admit the truth and consequences of: What our author, curiously, is afraid to say is, a difference in intelligence is a difference in species.

Ce soir, on nous assure, est le dernier soir ou` il fera chaud, et il fait, en effet, tre`s chaud. J'e'touffe.

Ce soir Vendredi est chez moi, il dit qu'il a l'intention de rester ici pendant tout le lendemain--ce que je ne saurais lui accorder sans quelque ge~ne. Je suis malade. J'ai la grippe, et sa pre'sence est ge~nant. J'ai me~me le besoin de de'guiser ma pensee' en franc`ais, pourqu'il n'en apperc`oive pas que j'e'cris a` son sujet. C'est ge~nant. Au moins il doit e~tre rassure' que je ne le conside`re point "mon ne`gre."

Nonetheless, I'm calling the landlady tomorrow and asking her to accept my money on the first. Here goes. As Kristen pointed out, when I get sick is when I'm throwing myself into life-change. 'Taint graceful, but it's real.

Walking down to the commmunity center yesterday morning to meet Friday (he didn't show) and do laundry, by way of the Zionist Synagogue, as I crossed the intersection in front of the Druid Temple, I was hailed by a man sitting with Sally the espresso vendatrix at her outside Cote d'Azur-type cafe tables with large colorful parasols, in loud, glad tones calling "Anatole!" who drew me to his bosom when I came up to him. It was Ham (Hamilton) Beech, whom I haven't seen for more than two decades, and who married Gloria Nevens/McBeth/Borogrove, who was my best sidekick, though ten years younger than myself, in the glorious Early Seventies. Ham is now the "Executive Director" for the Synagogue, wears a pinstripe Armani suit, and looks maybe ten of the twenty-three years since we last saw one another. Sally, who like all good vendeuses de cafe' is a shrewd judge of character, watched with gratified awe the cordial Bushi-do of Ham's and my reunion. Ham gave me their home phone number and I called Gloria from Kristen's that evening and we talked till my ear nearly fell off. Turns out Ham and I (I'm learning this from Gloria, mind) were both at the U of O at the same time: We are both Ducks! Imagine. I still haven't seen Ham to see his reaction to this astounding coincidence; I imagine I'll get my hand wrung and my back patted.

I'm about to flee the Palace. If I don't weird out the landlady (of a particular apartment that I've already seen and fallen in love with) when I call her tomorrow, I'll hand her my SSI pittance on the first of next month, instead of paying rent here at the Palace. Working it out--so that Friday can crash there as much as he needs to (There are two rooms and a miniscule bath), Perhaps even retaining my internet cable service, without driving either of us nuts, or making it a marriage/commitment sort of thing--has been the subject of delicate, volatile, nay uproarious, negotiation between us. When I tried to explain to him how the world looks to us Dons Quixotes and Robinson Crusoes, and where Sanchos and Men Fridays fit in it, he went ballistic.

Meeting Friday dai luterani, we walked back through Browne's Addition looking for an apartment to share this fall, findding several possibilities. Oh oh. Patty will skin me alive. So will Kristen. But damn it'd be nice to be out of the Palace this winter....

dal Centro per gli Anziani. Though I've said it before, the truth is that the years are going faster and faster as I approach the 64th year of my life. My doctor has to remind me to visit him these days. I've an appointment (at his instance) in an hour to see him; a nice German fellow, very thorough, brisk, uncompassionate. I quite like him. Hope we can do something about my damned blood pressure, which was high, systolic and dystolic, when I checked it at the supermarket yesterday. I don't want to die of apoplexy like I did in my last incarnation; or, if I must, I hope this time I don't expire in a fit of rage and self-pity. Friday has been reminding me that I owe it to the world to finish my education, and to teach--Where does he get these notions?

Last hot day of summer. Walking over to his place (for pot and coffee) with Marcus this morning, I found a gorgeous purple feather lying on the sidewalk, and I've been flirting and twirling it ever since.

Could it be that the reason I so much dislike William S. Burroughs is that I am so much like him? How obvious is that? It seems, I surmise, from Betty-Jean's perspective, the most obvious thing in the world. All right, Betty-Jean, but there is just this one little difference: The drugs I'm being oh so lucid and literary about are neither, ever, alcohol or heroin. There is a certain mentality (coarse-grained and hidebound) for whom all Drugs are Stupefacienti, so to say, stupifiying, and I would say that that is for the most part William S. Burrough's mentality also, given his avowed predilection for getting stupified, however damned lucid and literary he is about it. But you're right, Betty-Jean, there is this personal thing I have with Burroughs, something embarrassed and embarrassing, that prickles and nauseates--Make of it what you will.

Weather continuing fine, I weasled out of an engagement to help Friday scout out a campsite this afternoon. We've seen enough of one another the last couple of days; and frankly I (and my Cancer Ascendant) am a little frayed by Friday's unthinking gregariousness. But, funny, I can never disengage from Friday without hurting his feelings. So anyway, what I propose is to take my 'Orlando Furioso' down by the river, and sit in the shade and read. I'm making great progress, and enjoying it immensely: This is what Spenser was trying to do, I think: An interesting story, with engaging characters, well and wittily told--and what lovely, memorable verses!

Kristen and I played a lot of music yesterday, Haydn, Handel, and Bach; best, first, we began with the first Brandenburg concerto--which we never, usually, play--and wrung compliments even from Marianne (whose soul is quite dead to music) who happened on us just as we rendered quite an extatic version of the adagio second movement. It was funny watching her try to put words to the esthetic universe unexpectedly opening before her. All she could say was, "That...was...beautiful."

Nathaniel Rattan's birthday. Very few days left in Leo, but the heat of summer lingers; tomorrow and the next day 'twill be in the 90's. Thankfully, the nights are getting long and cool. I've been seeing Friday (tweaking) all day today, first at the community center, where he was frantically, cela va sans dire, busy, trying on the one hand to buy food and medicine for an utter nothing of a beer-swigging girl's sick puppy, and on the other hand to hold on to his new boyfriend ("Scuba Steve"); both of which projects, by the time I saw him again this evening at the City Gate, had failed: The girl took her puppy's medicine-money and bought more beer; the boyfriend vanished.

Betty Jean, who lives in the vicinity of Kristen and Marianne, has been persecuting me with literary memoranda of William S. Burroughs, printing them up and leaving them lying where I'll run across them. What, I ask her, is the meaning of this? I'm trying to understand why she thinks I'd be interested. She did, be it noted, hit it right on, when she brought over a good, recent biography of Lytton Strachey, whom, and whose writings I of course adore; but what does she think I'd like about Burroughs? Betty Jean mumbles something about Burroughs' having been well-read. I grant him his degree in English Literature from Harvard; but, in simplest terms, I loathe the man and despise his work. Sorry.

Marvelous souper intime Marianne gave Kristen and me last night: Roast lamb with a gravy that Marianne and I made together of roast-drippings, mint jelly, corn starch, wine, chicken broth, garlic, thyme and oregano; Kristen's little Klondike Gold steamed potatoes a' la Parisienne (halved, with the skins on, dotted with butter, sprinkled with parsley); boiled chard a' la Florentine (coarsely chopped, room temperature, well-drained, dotted with olive oil, sprinkled with salt and lemon juice); mellow Shiraz; Marianne's own world-class apple pie a' l'Americaine (with cheese); coffee. Verily, the spirit of Brillat-Savarin hovered o'er us, and we were charming and witty.

Nice 'mail from Phil this morning, with an enclosed snapshot of himself holding a stovetop espresso machine, asking me if I remember. I'll call him this morning from Kristen's. What is the moral of Marie Antoinettte's sad history? That, as soon as you see the Abyss widening at your feet, you should head for Austrian territory. Don't bother having a carriage built to get you there. Just go. And that (a widening Abyss), of course, is how I view the (forget the War on) Reign of Terror that the Bushies are unleashing. Kristen doesn't get it. Marianne doesn't even, quite, get it. I suppose that speaks well for them. Marcus is getting it, but, like most of America, he can't bear to believe it, and he doesn't have the intellectual resources (He's never read--couldn't curb his petulant impatience long enough to understand if he did--'The Screwtape Letters' or the second book of 'Paradise Lost') to comprehend the thing in principle. As my Dear Master has said, being a lunatic in a world of sane people is exactly the same condition as being the only sane person in a world of lunatics.

Napoleon's birthday, I think. Wouldn't you just know he'd be a Leo, born right on Ferragosto. I note that the "terrorist plot" which was "foiled" last week in London is already widely known for the implausible hoax it was. Horrifyingly, it doesn't seem to matter.

Well, Rosie, I'm back. I've been house-sitting both for Patty and for Kristen, who flew down to Portland last night with Steve Savage, to drive back today his new BMW. Without Kristen, I pretty much worked my way through both books of das wohltemperierte Klavier, among improvisations (of my own--spontaneous three-part fugati) and sonatas of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, plus a couple of J.S. Bach's notion of English suites. A good pracice. It's beginning to feel a lot like Virgo, everywhere you go. Friday, alas, who has been staying here--not unlike the musical chairs played by households in August in the Riseholm of E.F. Benson's Lucia novels--was discovered and confronted by Walter the True Believer, and probably has been dealt by him the severest of banishments and sanctions. Damn, what a lot of grief the Pure and Upright give their fellow humans.

I'm going to be spending the next few days house-sitting for Patty, she and Selma, Peter and Pasquale, having gone to the lake for a week. The big attraction is, Patty has air-conditioning and it's bloody hot.

And now, or soon, to the Racial Equality League's Sunday Breakfast for the Indigent, where, though 'twere but vainly, I will look for Friday, and go away drinking coffee, nor stay, for I want not their fat calories. But it's always nice to get out and meet my fellow Christians.

If this be Global Warming then so be it. I quite like it. Been reading fun stuff lately: Fitzgerald's/Khayyam's Rubaiyat; biographical matter on both of our authors, so like one another in their suggestive (I hear the ringing of antique symbols) Epicureanism, so unlike in their worldly fortunes. I love 'em both. I especially like Fitzgerald for saying that he was glad Elizabeth Barrett-Browning was dead: "At least we shall have no more 'Aurora Leigh's...." So I looked up 'Aurora Leigh' and found that it is indeed, apparently (for I have not read it, and am not likely to) a precious work of proto-feminism, "as if 'Pride and Prejudice' had been written by Shakespeare," and longer in its blank verses than 'Paradise Lost.' Whoa.

Friday, with a sly smile, asked me the other day if I ever read anybody else's blog. And my answer, which caused him almost to leer, was, "No, of course not. Why would I do that?" Much the same as I would answer somone who asked me if I ever attend concerts of contemporary music. A couple of weeks ago, Kristen was admiring my flawless way with fioriture and espressione in one of our favorite Handel organ concertos; politely demurring, I said, "Well, I won't tell you all my secrets, but when I'm playing a declamatory, gesticulatory piece like the one we just did, I imagine I'm Senesino singing 'Giulio Cesare.' The idea of wearing tall plumes helps."

Lovely weather. I'll be going down to the food-giveaway at the community center in a bit--not because I want food, but to see if Friday has survived the conversion of his welfare pittance into methedrine. Talking with Kristen, I proposed persuading the sisters at Holy Names Academy to let us use one of their nine-foot Steinways once a month, for intensive practise. This sounds innocent enough, and constructive, but what I really mean is: "For God's sakes, let's have some focus here. Learn the goddamned key-signatures. Don't forget from one measure to the next what the goddamned tempo is."

Two things are making a mess of Standard American English (spoken in its purity only in parts of Connecticut, New Hampshire, upstate New York, and throughout the Far West): Ignorance and Affectation. Of these, Affectation is by far the more fecund source of ghastly, stupid error. It is Affectation (a desire to sound erudite and of high social class), impure and not simple, which causes women and their imitators to say "cue-pon" instead of "coo-pon," and "between he and I" instead of "between him and me." The converse fault of pure and simple Ignorance is not, as Snobs suppose, the use of the objective cases of pronouns as nominatives (e.g., "Him and me are friends.")--which in my view is perfectly proper--but rather that Ignorance allows itself to be imposed upon by Affectation, and accepts at face-value Affectation's implicit claims to Genuineness and Gentility: People that say "Him and me are friends" are likely to believe that "between he and I" really does have a certain elegance, now that you mention it.

And so, limping like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, Friday fled early yesterday afternoon (past the the astonished and hostile surveillance of the insect powers at the front desk, thitherto unaware of his presence) in search of methedrine--much better for him than cocaine, which is all that's available, for the nonce, here at the Palace. So I wished him godspeed. We can only hope that his spider bite does not further ulcerate, or necrotize; though we imagine it will.

Kristen and I've been doing good, having given a fair account Monday afternoon of the 'Linz' and #39 in E Flat--Wagner called it 'the apotheosis of the dance' What a dumb-shit thing to call the most beautiful Haydn-like symphony in existence!