Through the open window, layers of sound--a finch fluttering its wings against the feeder as a squirrel shrieks in the spruce behind it, and beyond them a burbling robin.

I finished Rabbit Is Rich, and I don't know what to read next. I tried Rabbit at Rest but discovered that I had no interest in reliving Harry Angstrom's decay, not just now.

The house has become weary of this humidity, and now I notice that my living room rug smells odd, making me wonder what the dog's been up to.

I should go for a walk, mow grass, weed gardens, solve the rug problem . . . do something. But now that I have glanced at my bookshelves, I can tell you one thing I won't do and that's try to reread Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook. That novel contains some of the ugliest sentences I've ever met. It rivals an unpublished dissertation in the sheer grinding awkward pretentiousness of its prose. Why do I still own that book? Ugh.

I also don't know why I've suddenly plummeted into such a bad temper. I was perfectly placid before I started thinking about those sentences.

But now that I'm on the subject of boring and pretentious: don't try to tell me that Jim Morrison is a poet . . . unless your definition of poet is self-satisfied baritone with a weakness for organ noodling. Have some real bad-boy poetry, why don't you? 

So We’ll Go No More a Roving

            George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824)

So we’ll go no more a roving

            So late into the night,

Though the heart be still as loving,

            And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears the sheath,

            And the soul outwears the breast,

And the heart must pause to breathe,

            and Love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,

            And the day returns too soon,

Yet we’ll go no more a roving

            By the light of the moon.