Bridged today at the Central Union Church, from 10:00 till 3:00, with Mildred, Eugene, and Wilfred. Jolly we were, forgetting all time and all our cares.

But then, actually having begun to the Tibetan Book of Great Liberation, I found it made ever so much more sense without the introductions (so long, of course, as I assiduously read all the footnotes): clear as a bell; nothing mysterious or doubtful. But when then I went back and tried to slog through Jung's pre-digestion of it, it turned to mud. Hah.

Now, I do have something to add to Thoreauvian criticism. Say it loud, say it proud: The reason James Russell Lowell and Robert Louis Stevenson had their heads so far up their butts when they tried to deal with Thoreau (in a manner largely unconscious even to their uneasy, searching malice) is that: They were crude, half-consciously doctrinaire heterosexuals, resentfully perplexed and piqued by Thoreau's pure individualist male homosexual ethos and esthetic, in which the center of their universe (their relationship with women--their animae, so to speak) is completely absent, never considered, utterly disregarded, implicitly scorned. Makes 'em waspish and queasy.