Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson, Steven Moore

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 Pensees was 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