Or for that matter even poking into mummies in various museums to see if there might be any stuffing made out of lost poems by Sappho inside.

Except that what one senses even this readily is that there would very likely be almost no way for such a novel to end.

Especially once the heroine had finally become convinced that she may as well stop looking after all, and so could also stop being mad again.

Leaving her very little to do after that except perhaps to burn an occasional house to the ground.

Or to write make-believe Greek writing in the sand with her stick.

Which would hardly make very exciting reading.

Although one curious thing that might sooner or later cross the woman's mind would be that she had paradoxically been practically as alone before all of this had happened as she was now, incidentally.

Well, this being an autobiographical novel I can categorically verify that such a thing would sooner or later cross her mind, in fact.

One manner of being alone simply being different from another manner of being alone, being all that she would finally decide that this came down to, as well.

Which is to say that even when one's telephone still does function one can be as alone as when it does not.

Or that even when one still does hear one's name being called at certain intersections one can be as alone as when one is only able to imagine that this has happened.

So that quite possibly the whole point of the novel might be that one can just as easily ask for Modigliani on a telephone that does not function as on one that does.

Or even that one can just as easily be almost hit by a taxi that has come rolling down a hill with nobody driving it as by one that somebody is, perhaps.

Even if something else that has obviously become evident here is that I would not be able to keep out of my heroine's head after all.

So that I am already beginning to feel half depressed all over again, as a matter of fact.

Doubtless making it just as well that writing novels is not my trade in either case.

Well, as Leonardo similarly said.

Although what Leonardo actually said was that there is no better way of keeping sane and free from anxiety than by being mad.

And which has now given me the curious sensation that most of the things I do write often seem to become equidistant from themselves, somehow.

Whatever in heaven's name I might mean by that, however.

Once, when Friedrich Nietzsche was mad, he started to cry because somebody was hitting a horse.

But then went home and played the piano.

On my honor, Friedrich Nietzsche used to play the piano for hours and hours, when he was mad.

Making up every single piece of music that he played, too.

Whereas Spinoza often used to go looking for spiders, and then make them fight with each other.

Not being mad in the least.

Although when I say fight with, I mean fight against, naturally.

Even if for some curious reason one's meaning would generally appear to be understood, in such cases.

Would it have made any sense whatsoever if I had said that the woman in my novel would have one day actually gotten more accustomed to a world without any people in it than she ever could have gotten to a world without such a thing as The Descent from the Cross, by Rogier van der Weyden, by the way?

Or without the Iliad? Or Antonio Vivaldi?

I was just asking, really.

As a matter of fact it was at least seven or eight weeks ago, when I asked that.

It now being early November, at a guess.

Let me think.

Yes.

Or in any event the first snow has been and gone, at least.

Even if it was not a remarkably heavy snow, actually.

Still, on the morning after it fell, the trees were writing a strange calligraphy against the whiteness.

For that matter the sky was white, too, and the dunes were hidden, and the beach was white all the way down to the water's edge.

So that almost everything I was able to see, then, was like that old lost nine-foot canvas of mine, with its opaque four white coats of gesso.

Making it almost as if one could have newly painted the entire world one's self, and in any manner one wished.

Assuming one had also wished to paint outdoors in such chilly weather, that is.

Although the cold had been coming on for quite some time before that too, naturally.

So that I had already been to the town any number of times in the pickup truck, in fact.

Well, scarcely wishing to be caught short for supplies once I am basically locked in here, obviously.

And which is to say that I have now dismantled a good deal more of the house next door, as well.

Making two toilets fastened to pipes on the second floors of houses which no longer possess second floors that I now see when I go for my walks along the beach.

Now and again when I was calculating which of the boards I could get at next with my crowbar up there, by the way, I was reminded of Brunelleschi and Donatello.

Early in the Renaissance when Brunelleschi and Donatello had gone about measuring ancient ruins in Rome, this would be, and with such industry that people believed they could only be searching for buried treasure.

But after which Brunelleschi returned home to Florence and put up the largest dome since antiquity.

While Giotto built the beautiful campanile next door.

Even if there would appear to be no record in art history as to whether Giotto did that before or after he had painted the perfect circle freehand, on the other hand.

And as a matter of fact Giotto's campanile is square.

Although there is practically no place in Florence from which one cannot see either of those structures, incidentally.

Well, as there is practically no place in Paris from which one cannot see the Eiffel Tower, either.

And which might certainly disturb one's lunch, should one not wish to look at the Eiffel Tower while eating one's lunch.

Unless like Guy de Maupassant one had taken to crawling about on a floor and eating one's own excrement, say.

God, poor Maupassant.

Well, but poor Friedrich Nietzsche, too, actually.

If not to mention poor Vivaldi while I am at it also, since I now remember that he died in an almshouse.

And for that matter poor Bach's widow Anna Magdalena, who was allowed to do the same thing.

Bach's widow. And with all of those children. Some of whom were actually even more successful in music at the time than Bach himself had been.

Well, but then poor Robert Schumann as well, in a lunatic asylum and fleeing from demons. One of whom was even Franz Schubert's ghost.

For that matter poor Franz Schubert's ghost.

Poor Tchaikovsky, who once visited America and spent his first night in a hotel room weeping, because he was homesick.

Even if his head at least did not come off.

Poor James Joyce, who was somebody else who crawled under furniture when it thundered.

Poor Beethoven, who never learned to do simple child's multiplication.

Poor Sappho, who leaped from a high cliff, into the Aegean.

Poor John Ruskin, who had all those other silly troubles to begin with, of course, but who finally also saw snakes.

The snakes, Mr. Ruskin.

Poor A. E. Housman, who would not let philosophers use his bathroom.

Poor Giovanni Keats, who was only five feet, one inch tall.

Poor Aristotle, who talked with a lisp, and had exceptionally thin legs.

Poor Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, who I also now remember was one more person who died in a plague. But in her case while taking care of other nuns who were more ill than she.

Poor Karen Silkwood.

Well, and poor all the young men who died in places like the Hellespont, by which I mean the Dardanelles, and then died again three thousand years after that, likewise.