Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson, Steven Moore Page A

When the Grass Was Real is actually the name of one of those, I believe.
    In that case one is at least made halfway curious about the meaning of the title, I must admit.
    Less than inordinately curious, baseball remaining baseball, but at least halfway curious.
    As a matter of fact perhaps I will mow my own grass, which is undeniably real, even if it is inordinately overgrown.
    I cannot mow the grass. Not with the lawnmower being as badly rusted as the hand truck and the bicycles.
    I have other bicycles, actually.
    One is doubtless beside the pickup truck. Another may be at the gas station, in the town.
    There was a bicycle in the cul-de-sac beneath the Acropolis, come to think about it.
    Perhaps the books in the basement are duplicate books.
    Like the two lives of Brahms, that would be. Even if both of those would appear to have been upstairs.
    There is nobody at the window in the painting of the house, by the way.
    I have now concluded that what I believed to be a person is a shadow.
    If it is not a shadow, it is perhaps a curtain.
    As a matter of fact it could actually be nothing more than an attempt to imply depths, within the room.
    Although in a manner of speaking all that is really in the window is burnt sienna pigment. And some yellow ochre.
    In fact there is no window either, in that same manner of speaking, but only shape.
    So that any few speculations I may have made about the person at the window would therefore now appear to be rendered meaningless, obviously.
    Unless of course I subsequently become convinced that there is somebody at the window all over again.
    I have put that badly.
    What I intended to say was that I may possibly become newly convinced that there is somebody at the window, hardly that somebody who had been at the window has gone away but might come back.
    In either case it remains a fact that no altered perception of my own, such as this one, changes anything in the painting.
    So that perhaps my earlier speculations remain valid after all.
    I have very little idea what I mean by that.
    One can scarcely speculate about a person when there is no person to speculate about.
    Yet there is no way of denying that one did make such speculations.
    Two days ago, when I was hearing Kathleen Ferrier, what exactly was I hearing?
    Yesterday, when I was speculating about a person at the window in the painting, what exactly was I speculating about?
    I have just put the painting back into the room with the atlas and the life of Brahms.
    As a matter of fact I have now also had another night's sleep.
    I mention that, this time, only because in a manner of speaking one could now say that it has this quickly become the day after tomorrow.
    Certain questions would still continue to appear unanswerable, however.
    Such as, for instance, if I have concluded that there is nothing in the painting except shapes, am I also concluding that there is nothing on these pages except letters of the alphabet?
    If one understood only the Greek alphabet, what would be on these pages?
    Doubtless, in Russia, I drove right past St. Petersburg without knowing it was St. Petersburg.
    As a matter of fact Anna Karenina could have driven right past without knowing it was St. Petersburg either.
    Seeing a sign indicating Stalingrad, how would Anna Karenina have been able to tell?
    Especially since the sign would have more likely indicated Leningrad?
    I have obviously now lost my train of thought altogether.
    Once, Robert Rauschenberg erased most of a drawing by Willem de Kooning, and then named it Erased de Kooning Drawing.
    I am in no way certain what this is connected to either, but I suspect it is connected to more than I once believed it to be connected to.
    Robert Rauschenberg came to my loft in SoHo one afternoon, actually. I do not remember that he erased anything.
    The reason for one of my bicycles being at the gas station is that I sometimes decide to walk home, after having ridden somewhere.
    Although what I really decided that day