And so I get this

Dear diary,

Last night I wrote a long entry to you, and this morning I woke up and added to it, and then I photographed a couple of line drawings for imagery, but when I inserted these pics via Hypertext Markup Language, mistakenly they eclipsed the entry itself, and there was no way for me to replenish what had existed. No forgiveness of sin. MORAL: Save your being in a place where you can always access it, and hoard clones in receptacles every which way.

...timorous pond-snipe! nest of guarded duplicate eggs!
[—from "Song of Myself" (§24) by Walt Whitman]

We're still trying to paint our walls. We've removed the wallpaper, and removed the glue, and mudded and sanded and vacuumed and primed and scrubbed and washed, and repeated this entire process. And we're still trying to paint our walls. Today on the agenda is more sanding. And washing. And masking, or taping (hence the name "masking tape"). But even if we could actually color the walls white mocha (boring, I know), which is the color that we purchased – I say, even if we could FINISH the job THIS INSTANT, what would it profit us? «What boots it, with uncessant care to tend the homely slighted shepherd's trade?» Posthumous fame will be ours, if we paint these walls. (Thus claimeth Apollo.)

But then come the floors. I've got to install new floors, once the walls are done. THEN the house will be good.

This house will never be good. Even after the carpets are X'd with cheap vinyl etc., etc., the faucets in the kitchen and bathroom need replacing, plus the countertops and the cupboards and the vanity-mirror station and the thing beneath it...

On SADurday I visited my spiritual enemy. We first met in grammar school, after which he became my boss. That's the plot of my life. His (my boss's) only begotten son was present at the event in question, so I attended to both of them (big boss and boy), and we bandied half-thoughts. Ronaldo's son told the room that he had just enrolled in an art course, as part of the college classes that he's taking online. I said: Oh I love that subject; there is nothing more enthralling to me: I include God and all else fake in the class labeled art; likewise I abjure distinguishing sacred from secular: either everything's the former and nothing's the latter, or the other way round.

But my boss's son seemed less than interested.

Remember back in the days when people would act in accordance with their own FANCY and not on account of NECESSITY? I don't recall any such state of affairs either. It has always been this way (and by "it" I mean "humankind's contribution to eternity," and by "this way" I mean "semi-hearted"), I assume. You'd rather invest blood-sweat-and-tears into farming turnips than die of starvation. Because death is too X to be Y. Even though there's no end:

There is no stoppage and never can be stoppage,
If I, you, and the worlds, and all beneath or upon their surfaces, were this moment reduced back to a pallid float, it would not avail in the long run,
We should surely bring up again where we now stand,
And surely go as much farther, and then farther and farther.

—from "Song of Myself" (§45)

It's the perfect temperature here in this room (seventy-two eff), but I cannot enjoy it because I'm angry about losing the text that I wrote last night. It had some nice turns of phrase, and a few places where I lucked into wisdom.

Fine dining. Meditation. At present, there have "aired" four hours (of an alleged total of eighteen) of the latest Twin Peaks series—subtitled "The Return"—which I consider as the equivalent of nine new David Lynch movies (@120 min. apiece); and I purchased a subscription to the network that "owns" the show, just so I could watch it. (What are cable networks? Why do we have them?) My opinion is that the first two hours are among the worst work that Lynch has done, yet the third and fourth are among the very best. I especially love the sequence that begins episode three, which reminds me of the project that Lynch intended to create after finishing his first feature-length film Eraserhead. I've long admired the script for this abandoned sophomore effort titled Ronnie Rocket. Lynch ran into trouble with financing, which means that the money-folk (as is their timeworn habit) rejected his genius idea; so Lynch ended up having to accept the offer to direct The Elephant Man instead. That movie is a good movie, which is to say: I like it. But I've always lamented the loss of...

I only wanted to say (re Twin Peaks: The Return) that I think the third episode's beginning either expropriates aspects of the Ronnie Rocket script, or both scripts happen to touch upon similar material. (On a side note, I wish that Lynch and co-creator Mark Frost had somehow documented the manufacture of this screenplay, because I would love to parse their bandying of half-thoughts. In this instance, I am abnormally curious about the "creative process.") No: I really just want to state for the record that, at this point, in spite of my initial disappointment (I mean the fact that the first two hours alternately suck or blow), I'm beyond happy with the result of the extension of this miniseries; and I wish that more fine artists and cable networks would enter a state of angst-fraught accord, so as to...

Actually I wish nothing. I'm happy that so many shows are so awful, so base, so crowd-tested and executive-approved.