(Here is what I have to keep telling myself: One day I will read that paragraph over again and laugh my ass off.)

Oh, and Steve read my diary, at least a few pages of it. No nuclear conflagration resulted, and I suppose this is one enormous reason why I should also keep telling myself that despite the superficialities, this year is not in the least like last year. Although the part was weird this morning at the breakfast table � and the part is weird where I�m reporting on this knowing that the person I�m reporting on may later be reading it � where he and I were talking about the issue of pseudonyms in the diary and he thought one of my friends had one and I said no she didn�t so he went over to the PC like a ref under the instant-replay shroud and seconds later called the dispute in my favor. He didn�t know in which entry the proof was to be found, so he went to the archive page and read off some titles to me as if these were the names of *things*. I felt so � institutionalized, I felt like the diary was an institution; "Monument" was supposed to be a joke. And do I feel that way for real? Yes and no. I mean, I am an empiricist above all, and the fact is that the diary and the words it contains exist in a universe common to those who have the ability to access them. But here is something, and maybe it has been a significant blocking issue to me in my esp. more recent what-am-I-doing narcissism w/r/t putting the words out there like this, I think that I have wanted to believe that the diary could maybe be an institution � maybe only a dinky dilapidated leaky-roofed shack, fine, but with a bench in it, I insist on the bench, and sometimes there would be a rainstorm and if there happened to be a hiker around then he or she might momentarily be grateful for the shelter � and also to disavow, at my convenience, my association with it in the auteur sense, and why is that? Poor self-image, Seattle as critical black hole and me as stranded astronaut, memory of conflagrations past, willful bridge-burning where the concept of "being a writer" is concerned � and why is that? � not wanting to conflate the subject and the object like so many god-love-�em earnest but to me terrifyingly driven and single-minded constant updaters do because also knowing that subj-obj conflation is a particular Achilles� heel of mine� I don�t know, you do the math, because I don't feel like it. And, typo: "Achilles� hell." But what if, what if, maybe. So I am thinking. For instance, it would be theoretically possible to split the difference between the service and the convenience. And there�s a brainlessly easy way to prevent myself from chickening out of accountability to the first-person singular. I have the beginnings of a plan.

I�m loving the Jarrell so much I�m a little bit heartsick, heartsick that he�s dead and this is his only novel and with the same kind of perfectum resignation and awareness-of-death that a pinnacle always, however unfairly to the pinnacle, engenders. Here is my most recent part, and you will see how I cribbed from it: To Constance the Rosenbaums seemed as wonderful as Life, but really they were only as wonderful as life, that short blanket, that mixed blessing, that, that � and: end of paragraph. Heartsick, I tell you. Reading something like this so recently after having finished "What I Loved" couldn�t be a better illustration of the difference between erudition and pedantry. If I made a list of the proper nouns on the first 52 pages of "Pictures from an Institution," I bet it would be at least as long as the Hustvedt roster but it is not the same thing at all, it is apples and oranges, it is apples and neutrinos, because of an essential yet profoundly (o the irony) unempirical element of each writer�s consciousness. Jarrell is all empathy and yearning, so much so that even more than with S.P. � and no I am not going to see that necrophilic Oscar-bait insult of a movie so don�t even ask � you read him and find yourself thinking with what feels like logic, Yes, of course he had to die young. Or at least I do. Or, no, more than thinking and more than logic, you imagine that you have a sense of understanding. Or at least I do. When you read the book, Jarrell is there to you, three-dimensionally, not the same way as Hustvedt interjects herself like the trajectory of the raised hand of a front row teacher�s pet. Am I saying that I don�t or can�t fully credit a novel for which that three-dimensionality is not the case? And how does this preference (prejudice?) of mine square, if at all, with the James Wood how-somebody-felt-about-something school of novel criticism, because even if we�re not sure how much stock to put in Wood we know that we are nothing if we don�t do the same for standards?

I don�t know, I�m not saying I have the answers. As you see, I barely have the vocabulary to pose the questions. I�m just typing, and by doing so giving myself something to think about instead of the things I�m trying not to think about.

Poker last night, I know everyone will be shocked, was a no go, though I did finally get to see Julian�s new lakeside apartment. I�m not going after all to the show I had planned to see tonight because the circumstances have changed of the show-going-to for which I signed on. And it looks like I�m not going to Portland tomorrow and will take a hit on the hotel reservation because my great-aunt forgot Steve�s and my plans to come visit and scheduled an all-day shopping trip with my one of my second cousins and also is busy tomorrow. Does this sort of thing happen to everyone, or is it just me? I feel like whenever I make plans to do something, even if and perhaps especially if at least one other party is somewhere between involved and depended on, there is only about a 35% chance, max, that said plans will come to fruition. I feel sure that something should be read into this pathetic statistic. But who is its subject and who is its object? And why is that?