December 22, 2022

H sends a photo of herself surrounded by the flowers of a Florida Christmas. Had things been different I might have married her, and had things been exceptionally well, we might be married to this day. That would have been OK, from this side, for her expression is happy and fulfilled. A little old man with a little old lady on his arm. Almost inconceivable now. Not so much then. The first letter I wrote from my terrible room on Baltimore Street was to her, on stationery, I remember now, she had bought me. 

In a dream I decided that I’d get back to my academic career as an independent scholar. I prepared an article called “A Reading of Canto XX.” Looked at Canto XX when I woke. It deserves to be written about, the exultation of learning a vanished language (in this case, Provencal) and the sadness that at the beauty once expressed by it is now an echo, a fragment, a ghost.

Packet from the mortgage company containing a large check, as my escrow account was apparently over subscribed. My monthly payment goes down $200 a month next year. One receives caress as one receives the blow, marking them for any possible wisdom, moving on.