The name of the friend for whom Achilles weeps is Patroclus, which on the other hand I am quite certain I did leave out.

My last lover was named Lucien. I find it interesting that I have not included the name of a single one of my lovers in any of these pages, either.

Possibly those paintings by Tiepolo are in the Hermitage, at which I spent several days before leaving for home across Russia in the opposite direction.

As a matter of fact they are in Milan, where I saw them on the very day when I was so saddened by The Last Supper.

Where I watched the sunsets on that return trip, naturally, was more often than not in my rearview mirror.

Which would have made them images of sunsets rather than sunsets, come to think about it. And with the left side being the right, or vice versa, although one was doubtless less conscious of this with sunsets than one would have been with Michelangelo's notebooks.

Doubtless I was much more interested in keeping a weather eye out for Anna Karenina in either case, since I was naturally still looking, at the time.

Have I mentioned looking in Amsterdam, New York, or in Syracuse, or in Toledo, Ohio?

Meanwhile I have no idea why rearview mirrors should remind me that I was feeling a certain depression, yesterday.

In fact I have perhaps omitted to indicate that that was yesterday.

Last evening's sunset had a certain stillness about it, as if Piero della Francesca had done the color.

What I woke up to this morning were the lilacs, breathing them all over the house.

Later, I washed myself with some of the water I had brought in from the spring.

I am still wearing the underpants I wore yesterday, however.

This is because even though I went to the spring twice, on both trips I walked right past my laundry, which is spread across bushes.

To tell the truth, I am still feeling a touch of that same depression, as well.

Possibly what I had been thinking about yesterday was the tiny, pocket sort of mirror that had been beside my mother's bed, although I do not remember having thought about that yesterday.

There is a distinction to be made between this sort of depression and the depression I generally felt while I was still doing all of that looking, by the way, the latter having been much more decidedly a kind of anxiety.

Although I believe I have noted that.

One day I appeared to have finally stopped looking, in any event.

At the intersection of Anna Akhmatova Street and Rodion Romanovitch Raskolnikov Mews, perhaps this was.

Doubtless it would have been around that same time that I stopped reading out loud, also. Or in any case surely tearing out pages after having finished their reverse sides, so as to be able to drop them into the fire.

What I did later, with the pages from the life of Brahms, was to toss those into the breeze in the hope that the ash might take flight.

In Cádiz, where he was once writing his poems while living for a certain period near water, Marco Antonio Montes de Oca had a seagull which came to his window each morning, to be fed.

It was Lucien, in fact, who told me that. Lucien was once acquainted with William Gaddis also, I believe.

Though perhaps it was William Gaddis who lived for a certain period near water in Cádiz, and had a pet seagull.

The cat in the Colosseum was black, I am next to positive, and held up one paw as if it had hurt itself.

Nothing that I am writing in these moments should cause me to continue to feel depressed, I do not believe.

Although I am perhaps just enough disturbed by these underpants to have let that become a sort of nuisance factor.

I have just gone out for fresh underpants.

What I more exactly did was change while I was out there. There is always something pleasurable about changing into garments that are still warm from the sun.

Which will perhaps explain why I again left everything else on the bushes, in fact.

Then again, some of it may well remain there indefinitely, since I generally wear nothing at all, summers.

Once, I actually left out certain items which became frozen, when an early frost surprised me.

By the time I remembered to go for them, I was able to stand several of my wraparound denim skirts upright on the ground.

Skirt sculptures, one might have considered them.

And there can be no doubt at all that I had gotten rid of my anxiety by then, since I was even able to be amused by the concept.

Apparently, one day I had been looking and then one day I was not, as I have said.

Although very likely it was hardly that simple either.

Doubtless I had not even realized that anything had changed, for some time.

For some time I have been watching the sun go down every evening without anxiety, is perhaps what I finally one evening remembered to think.

Or, the eternal silence of these infinite spaces no longer makes me feel like Pascal.

I doubt very seriously that I thought that.

Sculpture is the art of taking away superfluous material, Leonardo once said, if that is at all relevant?

Although it was not Leonardo who said it but was Michelangelo.

And on third thought I believe that Leonardo did not put snow into one of his paintings after all. Certain whitish rocks in mist, were what I had had in mind.

Quite possibly Tiepolo did not paint either of those two paintings either, now that I think about it, although in this instance all I mean is that Tiepolo had a great many assistants in his workshop, and so may have done no more than the preliminary sketches.

Though as a matter of fact he also did, or did not, do a painting of Agamemnon sacrificing poor Iphigenia to raise winds for the Greek ships.

Painting is not my trade, is another thing that Michelangelo once said. When he said this was when a pope told him that the Sistine Chapel might look more agreeable with some pictures up on top.

Perhaps this was the same pope who once offered Michelangelo his chair, out of respect. This was a very significant moment in the history of art, since nothing of the sort had ever happened with an artist before.

I serve him who pays me, is something that Leonardo did say instead of Michelangelo, on the other hand. Doubtless there is a way in which this moment had its significance in the history of art, as well.

Actually, Tintoretto once threatened to shoot a critic with a gun, which many artists would have perhaps felt was a more significant moment than both of those put together.

And possibly it was only one of the Medici, who let Michelangelo sit down. Still, one would be pleased if the pope was not the same pope who made people burn Sappho's poems.

When I state that any of these things were done or said, incidentally, what I more truthfully mean is that they were alleged to have been done or said, of course.

As it was similarly alleged that Giotto once painted a perfect circle freehand.

Although I happen to believe it categorically about the circle, most of such tales being harmless enough to believe in any event.

Well, and I also see no reason not to believe that Piero di Cosimo would hide under a table when there was lightning. Or that Hugo van der Goes was not able to paint religious paintings in a church unless friars sang psalms to keep him from sobbing all day.

Piero di Cosimo is not to be confused with yesterday's sunset, by the way, which was a Piero della Francesca, nor is Hugo van der Goes to be confused with Rogier van der Weyden, whose Descent from the Cross is so badly lighted at the Prado.

Well, nor with Vincent Van Gogh, whose sunset was some days before Piero's.

Which symphony is it, by Shostakovitch, in which one can practically hear the tanks coming off the assembly line?

In any event all that any of these stories would appear to add up to, one suspects, is that many more people in this world than one's self were never able to shed certain baggage.