David Markson - Wittgenstein's Mistress

And they move, too, Galileo kept telling people.

Which became just as significant a moment in the history of science as Michelangelo not going near water at all became in the history of art, in fact.

I do not remember any longer if the water in which Galileo found the germs was the same water in which he had proved that the life of Lawrence of Arabia had to be put in first, on the other hand.

And on later thought it may have been Louis Pasteur who would never shake anybody's hand.

Or Leeuwenhoek.

What I find interesting about the possibility that it might have been Leeuwenhoek, actually, is that Leeuwenhoek was from Delft.

So that one of the people he would have refused to shake hands with would have almost assuredly been Jan Vermeer.

Unfortunately the same footnote that brought up Leeuwenhoek in connection with Delft gave no indication as to whether Vermeer might have taken this as a slight, however.

Well, or as to how Carel Fabritius may have felt about it, either.

Emily Brontë once painted a quite effective watercolor of Keeper which I have actually seen a reproduction of, incidentally, even if I have no idea what I have been saying that has now made me remember this.

Any more than I have any idea what has also now made me remember that Pascal invented the first adding machine.

Or how I even know that he did.

There goes my head again in that way that it sometimes does, doubtless being the only explanation here as usual.

Although one of my sunsets just before the rain was finally another Joseph Mallord William Turner, actually.

Even if what this next reminds me of is that one more thing that John Ruskin became famous for, besides the other thing I have already told about that he became famous for, was watching sunsets himself.

Although the real reason I remember this about John Ruskin is because he actually gave his butler instructions to remind him when it was time to look.

On my honor, John Ruskin once told his butler to announce the sunsets.

The sunset, Mr. Ruskin, being what the butler would say.

Even if something different that has just struck me is that I myself would appear to be saying on my honor extraordinarily frequently, of late.

Every single time I have said it it was only because what I had been talking about was the gospel truth, however.

Such as about Mrs. Ruskin not turning out to have had certain superfluous material taken away by somebody like Phidias, for instance.

Even if for the life of me I still cannot remember what I had been trying to get that monstrosity of a canvas up that stairway for, on the other hand.

Or whatever became of my pistol either, to tell the truth.

The pistol being the one with which I had shot holes into one of the skylights in the museum so that the smoke from my chimney would go out, obviously.

Well, I have just mentioned this. Or perhaps it was only certain additional broken windows that I mentioned.

Nonetheless the last place I would seem to remember still carrying the pistol in was Rome, for some reason.

Well, on the afternoon when I ran into that alley, in fact, which was actually a cul-de-sac. On a street full of taverns below the Borghese Gallery, at the intersection of Calpurnia Avenue and Herodotus Road.

After seeing my own reflection, highlighted against a small stretched canvas coated with gesso in the window of a shop selling artists' supplies, as I had passed.

Still, how I nearly felt, in the midst of all that looking.

Looking in desperation, as I have said.

But too, never knowing just whom one might find, as well.

Although as a matter of fact it may very well have been Cassandra I had intended to paint, on those forty-five square feet.

Or should I have spelled that Kassandra, perhaps?

Even if a part I have always liked is when Orestes finally comes back, after so many years, and Electra does not recognize her own brother.

What do you want, strange man? I believe this is what Electra says to him.

Although it is the back of the jacket on a recording of the opera that I am thinking about now, I suspect.

Well, or because of imagining that somebody may have actually called one's own name, do I possibly mean?

You? Can that be you? And here, of all places?

It was only the Piazza Navona, I am quite certain, so beautiful in the afternoon sun, that had touched a chord.

Still, not until dusk did I emerge from the cul-de-sac.

In Italy, no less, from where all painting came.

So why would I now suddenly be thinking about certain murals by David Alfaro Siqueiros, of all people?

And to tell the truth I also have no idea whatever became of my thirty silent radios either, actually, that I once listened to and listened to.

Poor Electra. To wish to murder one's own mother.

Yet everybody, in those stories. Wrist deep in it, the lot of them.

Doubtless the radios are still in my old loft in SoHo, as a matter of fact.

Still. So where are my seventeen wristwatches, then?

It did run on, that madness.

Walking in the rain I have not gone much farther than to where one can see the toilet fastened to pipes on the second floor in the house where I knocked over the kerosene lamp, incidentally.

Even if there is no second floor.

Although what I am really remembering about that ankle now is how astonishingly adept I became at maneuvering my wheelchair, once I had located one.

Skittering from one end of the main floor to the other, in fact, when the mood took me.

From the Buddhist and Hindu antiquities to the Byzantine, or whoosh! and here we go round the icons of Andrei Roublev.

But which in turn now makes me wonder that if I am presently hurting in two places at once, as I undeniably am, would this then mean that I am actually hurting in four?

Except that I have now completely forgotten what the other two places are that I might have meant, unfortunately.

Andrei Roublev was a pupil of Theophanes the Greek, by the way. In fact he was also a sort of Russian Giotto.

Well, perhaps he was not a Giotto. Being the first great Russian painter nonetheless, having perhaps been all one meant.

And Herodotus was almost always spoken about as having been the first person ever to write down any real history, incidentally.

Even if I am not especially overjoyed at being the last.

As a matter of fact I am quite sorry I said that.

Such thoughts again being exactly the sort one would have wished to believe one had gotten rid of with the rest of one's baggage, naturally.

Oh, well. One can be thankful that they have been coming up only rarely these days, at least.

Have I ever said that Turner once actually had himself lashed to the mast of a ship, to be able to later do a painting of a storm?

Which has never failed to remind me of the scene in which Odysseus does the identical thing, of course, so that he can listen to the Sirens singing but will stay put.

But now good heavens.

Here I sit, and it is only after all this time that I have remembered the most significant thing I had meant to say about the basement once I had started to say anything at all about the basement.

The person who wrote that book about baseball did not make any sort of ridiculous error in its title after all, as it turns out.

On my honor, there is a separate carton in the basement which contains absolutely nothing except grass that is not real.

Artificial grass being something I had never even heard of before, I would swear. So that doubtless I would have scarcely been able to imagine what it was down there at all, if the carton had not had a label.

Then again, if the carton had not had a label, unquestionably I still would have been struck by the manner in which what was inside of it certainly did look like grass.