All I am assuming when I say it crashed into something else is that surely there would have had to be other obstacles in its path sooner or later.

Certainly it would have had to hit a street sign, or possibly even an English house, if it did not hit another car.

When one comes right down to it, on the other hand, I did not hear the sound of the crash either.

Then again it is quite possible that I was not really listening, what with the overall duration of that condition of being startled.

All that I was truthfully doing was continuing to stand in front of the bookstore, which was next door to a Mexican restaurant.

The restaurant had reproductions of paintings by David Alfaro Siqueiros in its window.

The car in question had been a London taxi cab, by the way.

To this day I have no idea what may have caused it to roll down that hill on a morning when I happened to be visiting in the same neighborhood.

Something had finally deteriorated, doubtless, that it had been wedged against.

Doubtless any number of other vehicles have been rolling down any number of other hills, in fact, through all of these years.

Quite possibly a certain number of them are doing exactly that at this very moment, even.

One has no idea what number, but a certain number, surely.

Then again the tires on many cars have become flat, which would indisputably have become a factor.

But be that as it may, eventually I walked some distance past my own car to see which of the various possible obstacles the taxi had crashed into.

I did not see the taxi anywhere.

The hill made a turn, as it happened.

Still, surely I would have eventually come upon it, if I had wished to pursue the matter.

And assuming of course that I did not mistake a different wrecked taxi for the taxi I was looking for.

What I appeared to be more interested in at the moment, however, was the Mexican restaurant, which I had not noticed earlier.

Although actually what I let myself into the restaurant for was a bottle of tequila.

Well, all of this having occurred during the period when I was still looking, if I have not indicated that. So that surely a drink was permitted.

Moreover I was doubtless also remembering having been identically startled by that ketch, in sight of Mount Ida.

Actually, what surprises me about the ketch in retrospect is that that spinnaker had not been shredded years before.

Although possibly the ketch had been sheltered somewhere, and had not begun to drift until lately.

As the taxi had not begun to roll until the same morning on which I stopped at the bookstore and read the life of Brahms.

I had not gone into the bookstore with anything approximating a life of Brahms in mind, incidentally. All I did was pick up the first book I happened to see, which was lying on a counter.

And which in fact was not a life of Brahms at all, but a history of music. For children.

But which had been open to a chapter on Brahms.

The book was printed in extraordinarily large type. Addi- tionally, the chapter on Brahms could not have been more than six pages long.

Unquestionably there would have been nothing about dancing girls in it either.

Still, if I had not decided to read the chapter, certainly I would have been somewhere else by the time the taxi rolled down the hill.

Instead, there I was, forced to think, good heavens! here comes a car, and a moment after that, oh, well, of course it is not a car.

In thinking the latter I meant only that it was not a car with anybody driving it, obviously.

Naturally you can never find a taxi when you want one.

But again, all of this in the midst of all that looking, nonetheless.

Not to speak of all that anxiety.

Although as a matter of fact I noticed a taxi just today, at the boat basin.

That particular taxi has been in the identical spot since I came to this beach, however.

Nor will it leave, what with all four of the tires being flat in this case.

In fact its wheels are in deep sand, also.

The tires on the pickup truck are fine. Though naturally I check those.

There is an air pump under the seat, in any event.

Then again I suspect that I may have neglected to run the battery for some time, now.

I have just walked out to the pickup truck.

Actually where I walked was to the spring, which the truck is next to. I went for the pitcher, which is how I think of the jar.

Before bringing it back I emptied it out and filled it again, since the water had already turned warm from standing in the sun.

The water at the spring itself is always cool, however.

I have brought in lilacs, also.

It is Joan Baez, I believe, whom I would like to inform that one can now kneel and drink from the Loire, or the Po, or the Mississippi.

Winters, when the snows come and the trees write their strange calligraphy against the whiteness, sometimes the only other demarcation is that of my path to the spring.

Well, and in the opposite direction too, of the path that I follow through the dunes to the beach.

Although I am completely forgetting the third path, just in back of the dunes, which is still another that can be seen at such times.

That third path is the path to the house that I have been dismantling.

Perhaps I have not mentioned that I am dismantling a house.

I am dismantling a house.

It is tedious work, but necessary.

I do not make a major project out of it, on the other hand. Basically I treat it in much the same way as I treat the question of my driftwood.

Perhaps I have not mentioned how I treat the question of my driftwood.

All that will happen, basically, is that now and again I will be walking past the house, and a board will catch my eye, and so I will dismantle the board and carry it home.

Assuming I am not already carrying driftwood, obviously.

Actually there was adequate firewood here already, for my first winter.

Well, there was almost adequate firewood here. Later along I burned certain items of furniture.

All of those were from the rooms that I no longer make use of, as it happens, and to which the doors are closed.

Now that I think about it, very possibly that is even why I have taken to closing those doors, although I cannot imagine why I would not have made this connection before.

In any case the house that I am dismantling contains almost no furniture at all. In fact it is quite indifferently built.

The only tool I have needed for any of the work is a crowbar, which I took from beneath the same seat in the pickup truck.

Well, there is also the saw, which I came upon in the house itself.

Then again I do not really think of the saw as a tool for dismantling. Rather I think of that as a tool for turning dismantled lumber into firewood.

After it has been dismantled.

Although perhaps this distinction is no more than one of semantics.

At any rate I have no idea why the house should have been constructed so indifferently.

One can only guess that it had been built to be rented, perhaps, rather than to be lived in, which is sometimes the case with houses along a beach.

The world is everything that is the case.

I have no idea what I mean by the sentence I have just typed, by the way.

For some reason I seem to have had it in my head all day, however, although without the vaguest notion about where it might have come from.

Such things can happen. One morning not too long ago all I could think about was the word bricolage, which I presume is French, even though I do not speak one word of French.

Well, perhaps I did not think about it at all, in the usual sense of thinking.

Still, when I went for my walk along the beach, or was picking up shells as I sometimes do, I must have said the word bricolage to myself a hundred times.