Though I also called the cat Calpurnia, after a time, when it struck me that I should cover all bases.

Doubtless there was no seagull either.

It is the seagull which brought me to this beach, that I am speaking about now.

High, high, against the clouds, little more than a speck, but then swooping in the direction of the sea.

I will be truthful. In Rome, when I thought I saw the cat, I was undeniably mad. And so I thought I saw the cat.

Here, when I thought I saw the seagull, I was not mad. So I knew I had not seen the seagull.

Now and again, things burn. I do not mean only when I have set fire to them myself, but out of natural happenstance. And so bits and pieces of residue will sometimes be wafted great distances, or to astonishing heights.

I had finally gotten accustomed to those.

Still, I would have vastly preferred to believe I had seen the seagull.

As a matter of fact it was much more probably the thought of sunsets, which brought me to this beach.

Well, or of the sound of the sea.

After I had finally determined that I may as well stop looking, this is.

Have I mentioned looking in Damascus, Syria, or in Bethlehem, or in Troy, New York?

Once, near Lake Como, at a stone stairway that reminded me somewhat of the Spanish Steps, I put several loose coins that had been lying in my Jeep into a public telephone, intending to ask for Giovanni Keats.

I had no idea if Keats had ever visited Lake Como, actually.

For some weeks in Mexico I drove a Jeep also. And so was able to maneuver directly up the hillside, instead of taking the road, each time I went to the cemetery.

How many different vehicles have I made use of, I suddenly wonder, since all of this started?

Well, more than one could have kept track of just down to Cuernavaca or back, surely. What with having to switch at so many obstacles, even disregarding when one ran out of gas.

By obstacles I most generally mean other cars, naturally. In whatever nuisance locations they had come to a stop.

And on top of which I always foolishly troubled to transfer all of my baggage as well, in those days.

Excepting when I was forced to walk too considerable a distance between one vehicle and the next, of course.

But even then, would repeatedly burden myself with more of the same in no time.

Here, I have three denim skirts that wrap around, and some cotton jerseys.

Most of which at the moment are lying across bushes, drying in the sun.

I drive only rarely now, as well.

As a matter of fact the clothing out at the spring has been dry for some days.

In autumn, after the leaves have fallen, I would be able to see it from exactly where I am sitting at this moment, possibly.

The cat at the Colosseum was russet colored, incidentally.

The gull was your ordinary gull.

Actually it was ash, carried astonishingly high and rocked by breezes.

Every last one of those skirts and jerseys has gotten faded, because I almost always forget about them out there like this.

I am wearing underpants, but only because the seat of this chair has no cushion.

I have also just brought blueberries in from the kitchen.

Was it really some other person I was so anxious to discover, when I did all of that looking, or was it only my own solitude that I could not abide?

Wandering through this endless nothingness. Once in a while, when I was not mad, I would turn poetic instead. I honestly did let myself think about things in such ways.

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me. For instance I thought about them like that, also.

In a manner of speaking, I thought about them like that.

Actually I underlined that sentence in a book, named the Pensees, when I was in college.

Doubtless I underlined the sentence about wandering through an endless nothingness in somebody else's book, as well.

The cat that Pintoricchio put into the painting of Penelope weaving may have been gray, I have a feeling.

Once, I had a dream of fame.

Generally, even then, I was lonely.

Later today I will possibly masturbate.

I do not mean today, since it is already tomorrow.

Well, it is already tomorrow insofar as that I have watched a sunset and had a night's sleep since I began typing these pages. Which I began yesterday.

Perhaps I ought to have noted that.

When the woods started to fill up with shadows, and this corner darkened, I went into the kitchen and ate more of the blueberries, and then I went upstairs.

Yesterday's sunset was an abstract expressionist sunset. It is about a week since the last time I had a Turner.

I do not masturbate often. Though at times I do so almost without being aware of it, actually.

At the dunes, perhaps. Just sitting, being lulled by the surf.

There is an ebb, is all.

I suspect I have done it while driving too, however.

I am quite certain that I masturbated on a road in La Mancha once, near a castle that I kept on seeing and seeing, but that I never appeared to get any closer to.

There was an explanation for not getting any closer to the castle.

The explanation being that the castle was built on a hill, and that the road went in a flat circle around the bottom of the hill that the castle was built on.

Very likely one could have driven around that castle eternally, never actually arriving at it.

Before I ever saw one, I would have supposed that castles in Spain was just a phrase.

There are castles.

Near someplace called Savona, which is not in Spain but in Italy, I went off the road, once.

Part of the embankment had fallen away. This is on the seacoast, that I am talking about, so that if one goes off an embankment one has gone into water.

Instead of watching a castle I had been watching the water, doubtless.

As a matter of fact the car turned over.

Only my shoulder hurt, some moments afterward.

Well, the very shoulder that is now arthritic, come to think about it. I had never made that connection before.

Perhaps there is no connection.

In either case the car also began to fill up with water.

Interestingly, I did not feel frightened in the least. Or perhaps it was the realization that I had not badly injured myself, which reassured me.

Still, I understood that opening my door and getting out would be a sensible notion under the circumstances.

I was not able to open my door.

During all of this time I was on the roof of the car, by the way.

I mean on the inside of the roof, obviously. And with the rubber mat from the floor having fallen on top of me.

I do not remember what kind of a car I was driving at the time.

Well, one was scarcely driving it any longer in either case.

What I was doing was trying to crawl across to the opposite door.

The water came up only to the tops of my sandal straps.

Still, the entire experience terrified me.

I am aware that I have just said it had not frightened me in the least.

As a matter of fact what happened was that it did not frighten me until it was over.

Once I had climbed back onto the embankment, and could see the car upside down in the water, it frightened me rather impressively.

I cannot say with any certainty that I had been masturbating when I failed to notice the collapsed embankment.

Or whether I had been driving toward Savona, or had already passed Savona.

What is fairly certain is that I was driving into Italy, and not out, since in driving into Italy along that coast one would have the sea at one's right hand, which is the side I went into it from.

Even if I have no recollection whatsoever of ever having driven into Italy from the direction I am talking about.

Doubtless it is partly age, which blurs such distinctions.