Quotation of the Day.

"If you don't feel happy when you're reading or when you're writing, of if you don't feel greatly moved, then you are not really reading or writing. The whole thing is merely reading, I mean for examination marks, and that, of course--I won't say that way madness lies, but that's the way dullness lies." - Jorge Luis Borges, on William F. Buckley's Firing Line.

Methodology:

My method this morning of consuming my orange (grown 10 feet from where it is being ingested--little distance has it traveled), is to insert large portions of it (2 slices a time at least) into my mouth, to chew, letting the fruit's natural juices to trickle tranquilly down my throat, and then to open my mouth widely, facing downward over the trashcan, letting the orange remains plop down into the garbage.

You don't even want to know how I'm drinking my coffee.

A Valedictory Gift.

I have just received a letter from Coeur d'Alene Idaho, from my recent landlady. She has mailed me a check for around 2/3 of the deposit I put down on the beautiful apartment I loved and inhabited for 9 months. But this is not what the woman, Beatrice, has given me.

She signs her brief note, "As Ever, Bea". This valediction is her gift: whatever sentiment manages to be expressed in signing a letter "As Ever", something simple and quotidian, verging on tedium--maybe the sentiment of not working to express any particular sentiment. This valediction is a small stroke that, by its mere statement of fact, will serve me as an available ornament to adorn otherwise meaningful or important or good letters, imbuing them with a faint sense of hollowness, at least for myself; this is the wonderful, lifelong gift Beatrice has given me.

As Ever,
Jonathan