Free Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson, Steven Moore Page B

drift.
    Though I did give serious thought to the notion of rowing out beyond the breakers on the night on which my house was burning to the ground, actually, once it had struck me to wonder from how far out the flames might be seen.
    Doubtless I would not have rowed nearly far enough, even ifI had gone, since one would have surely had to row all the way beyond the horizon itself.
    For that matter one might have actually been able to row as far as to where one was out of sight of the flames altogether, and yet still have been seeing the glow against the clouds.
    Which is to say that one would have then been seeing the fire upside down, so to speak.
    And not even the fire, but only an image of the fire.
    Possibly there were no clouds, however.
    And in either case I no longer had a rowboat.
    Now, each time I go to the beach, I take a look to make certain that the new rowboat is in its place.
    In fact I took such a look only moments ago, when I came back from the town.
    Perhaps I have not mentioned that I came back from the town by way of the beach, instead of the way I had gone, which was by way of the road.
    Which would explain why I did not remember to bring in my pitcher, which I had left at the spring.
    Frequently I tend to think of my jar as a pitcher. Doubtless this is only because a pitcher has more of the sound of what one would wish to carry to a spring.
    Though perhaps another reason why I did not remember it is that I am feeling somewhat tired.
    Actually, I am not feeling tired. How I am feeling is not quite myself.
    Well, perhaps what I am more truthfully feeling is a kind of depression. The whole thing is fairly abstract, at this point.
    In any case, doubtless I was already feeling this way when I stopped typing. Doubtless my decision to stop typing had much to do with my feeling this way.
    I have already forgotten what I had been typing when I began to feel this way.
    Obviously, I could look back. Surely that part cannot be very many lines behind the line I am typing at this moment.
    On second thought I will not look back. If there was something I was typing that had contributed to my feeling this way, doubtless it would contribute to it all over again.
    I do not feel this way often, as a matter of fact.
    Generally I feel quite well, considering.
    Still, this other can happen.
    It will pass. In the meantime there is little that one can do about it.
    Anxiety being the fundamental mood of existence, as somebody once said, or unquestionably should have said.
    Though to tell the truth I would have believed I had shed most of such feelings, as long ago as when I shed most of my other sort of baggage.
    When winter is here, it will be here.
    Even if one would appear never to be shed of the baggage in one's head, on the other hand.
    Such as the birthdays of people like Pablo Picasso or Dylan Thomas, for instance, which I am convinced that I might still recite if I wished.
    Or the name Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, even if one still has no idea who she may have been.
    I do not know who Marina Tsvetayeva may have been either, although in this case the name at least did not come into my mind until an hour ago, when I was at the boat basin.
    Obviously, I was thinking about the other sort of marina.
    Actually it was Helen Frankenthaler's name that caught my eye on that poster not far from the Via Vittorio Veneto. I do not remember ever having been in a show with Georgia O'Keeffe.
    Though in fact perhaps it was Kierkegaard who said that, about anxiety being the fundamental mood of existence.
    If it was not Kierkegaard it was Martin Heidegger.
    In either case I suspect there is something ironical in my being able to guess that something was said by Kierkegaard, or by Martin Heidegger, when I am convinced that I have never read a single word written by Kierkegaard or Martin Heidegger.
    A good deal of one's baggage would appear to be not even one's own, as I have perhaps elsewhere suggested.
    Anna Akhmatova is somebody else whom I