Conversely, I have no more intention of even opening something called The Origin of Table Manners than I do of reading the book about grass.

One other is actually called The Eiffel Tower, of all nonsense subjects.

There is naturally nothing in any of the plays about anybody menstruating, incidentally.

Although when one comes right down to it, one can often make an educated guess about that sort of thing despite the silence.

One has a fairly acute inkling as to when Cassandra may be having her period, for instance.

Cassandra is feeling out of sorts again, one can even imagine Troilus or certain of the other Trojans now and again saying.

Then again, Helen could be having hers even when she still possesses that radiant dignity, being Helen.

My own generally makes my face turn puffy.

One is next to positive that Sappho would have never beaten around the bush about any of this, on the other hand.

Which could well explain why certain of her poems were used as the stuffing for mummies, even before the friars got their hands on those that were left.

On my honor, pieces of Sappho's lost work were found cut into strips inside dead Egyptians.

Have I mentioned that Sappho's father was named Scaman-dros, for the river near Hisarlik that I once went to see, by the way?

I am by no means implying that there is anything significant about this, which merely strikes me as an agreeable fact to include.

Once, in the National Portrait Gallery, in London, looking at Branwell Brontë's group portrait of his three sisters, I decided that Emily Brontë looked exactly like what Sappho must have looked like.

Even though the pair of them could have scarcely been more different, of course, what with the considerable likelihood that Emily Brontë never even once had a lover.

Which is presumably an explanation for why so many people in Wuthering Heights are continually looking in and out of windows, in fact.

Or climbing in and out of them, even.

Still, the thought of this sort of life has always saddened me.

What do any of us ever truly know, however?

The name of Hector's little boy was Astyanax, incidentally.

As a matter of fact that was only a nickname. What he was really named was Scamandrius.

I have no wish to imply anything in regard to this coincidence, either.

A certain number of such connections do appear to keep on coming up, however. A few days ago, for instance, when I remarked that Aristotle had once been Plato's pupil, I also remembered that Alexander the Great was later Aristotle's.

What that reminded me of was that Helen's lover Paris was really named Alexandros. And for that matter that Cassandra was often called Alexandra.

There seemed no point whatsoever in mentioning any of this. Even if it happens that Alexander the Great always kept a copy of the Iliad right next to his bed, and actually believed that he was directly descended from Achilles.

Or that Achilles once almost drowned in the Scamander.

Although I have also now remembered that Jane Avril kept a certain book right next to her bed too, even if I have forgotten what book.

And now I further remember that it was Odysseus, again, who convinced the other Greeks that they should not leave any male survivors at Troy.

God, the things men used to do.

I have just said that, I know.

Still, what especially distresses me, in this instance, is how quickly Odysseus had forgotten that plow, and his own little boy.

At least one can be gratified that Sappho had a child of her own, too. Well, a daughter, like Helen.

Which is to say that any number of later Greeks could have been directly descended from Sappho as well, even if one would have surely lost track, after a certain period of years.

But who is to argue that it might not have come all the way down to somebody like Irene Papas, even?

Plato's own teacher was of course Socrates, if I have not said.

Meanwhile the title of that life of Brahms, I suddenly suspect, may well have been The Life of Brahms, and not A Life of Brahms after all.

Undeniably The Life of Brahms would have been more appropriate, the man having had only one life.

Which is perhaps failing to consider the possibility of its having been called simply Brahms, however.

Or that there also happens to be a life of Shostakovich in the other house, the title of which is Shostakovich, A Biography.

There is no poster showing Jane Avril and three other Paris dancers taped to the living room wall in the other house, incidentally.

The poster is on the floor of the living room in the other house.

After so much discussion, when I went out for my walk yesterday I decided to walk through the woods rather than along the beach.

Which is also to say that it is again tomorrow. And which I imagine needs no further explanation, by this juncture.

Except to perhaps note that everything is still all lilac.

What I do wish to mention, however, is that the poster had indisputably fallen some time ago, since it was covered with leaves. And with fluffy cottonwood seeds.

The reason I wish to mention this is that through all of that time, in my head, the poster was still on the wall.

In fact the very way I was able to verify that I had ever even been to the other house, some few pages ago, was by saying that I could distinctly remember the poster.

On the wall.

Where was the poster when it was on the wall in my head but was not on the wall in the other house?

Where was my house, when all I was seeing was smoke but was thinking, there is my house?

A certain amount of this is almost beginning to worry me, to tell the truth.

I have no idea what amount, but a certain amount.

Actually, I did well in college, in spite of frequently underlining sentences in books that had not been assigned.

One is now forced to wonder if underlining sentences in Kierkegaard or Martin Heidegger might have shown more foresight, however.

Or if some of these very questions may have even been answered as long ago as when Alexander the Great happened to raise his hand in class.

Perhaps they were the identical questions that Ludwig Wittgenstein would have preferred to think about on the afternoon when Bertrand Russell made him waste his time by watching Guy de Maupassant row, in fact.

Although come to think about it I once read somewhere that Ludwig Wittgenstein himself had never read one word of Aristotle.

In fact I have more than once taken comfort in knowing this, there being so many people one has never read one word of one's self.

Such as Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Even if one was always told that Wittgenstein was too hard to read in any case.

And to tell the truth I did once read one sentence by him after all, which I did not find difficult in the least.

In fact I became very fond of what it said.

You do not need a lot of money to buy a nice present, but you do need a lot of time, was the sentence.

On my honor, Wittgenstein once said that.

Still, yesterday, if he had been hearing the tanks coming off the assembly line in Tchaikovsky's sixth symphony, what exactly would Wittgenstein have been hearing?

When people first heard Brahms's first symphony, all that most of them could say was that it sounded a lot like Beethoven's ninth symphony.

Any donkey can see that, being what Brahms said in turn.

I believe I would have liked Brahms.

Well, and I certainly would have found it agreeable to tell Ludwig Wittgenstein how fond I am of his sentence.

Then again I harbor sincere doubts that I would have liked John Ruskin, even if I have no idea what I have been saying that has now made me think about John Ruskin.