At the window pass strange mowing monks. They ride with cowls over their heads. They are intent upon their progress, looking neither to the left nor to the right. The thoughts they think, the sounds they hear, these do not amuse them.

They are intent upon their business, like aliens who have just landed and are riding their rovers: exploring, examining, collecting information with all the intensity of interest. This concentrated unenjoyment is the behavior of scientists. We know when the aliens come they will be like scientists.

They have a plan to implement. They all concentrate on certain areas—mainly the grass. The grass fascinates the aliens because of its close connection with the soil. It is full of real earthling life.

***

Inik: What if the aliens found us, man and just started mowing the grass, you know?

Haze: Far out.

Inik: I mean, what if that was their obsession? Like when we land on the moon and stuff, it’s like we have to do what might seem weird and repetitive. We might have to do things concerned with a small area.

Haze: No doubt, man.

Inik: So when the aliens find us they might do that. It is totally conceivable.

Haze: We would probably not even notice it . . . you know, I bet all the noise the lawnmowers make is probably what they really use to scan a place. It looks innocent, but they’re checking where all the buildings are, like radar, you know? Only it also comes back with, like, your blood type, man.

Inik: What noise?

***

They are in a hurry always. Today it is also warm, and tomorrow it will be cold; better if they do all the mowing today. You never see the mowers horsing around. They cannot talk since they are blasted by the noise all the day long. They must have louder noise on their headphones. Headphones are the beads of modern, lawn mowing monks. They will probably talk to each other in the truck on the way to the next job. When they start to mow all is business; they work like scientists and they look like monks.

***

Haze: What if they got to their next job and found it was already done?

Inik: Like, finished?

Haze: Yeah. And what if they went to the next one and it was done, and the next one. And then they would come upon one that was still not finished and it would be the aliens, man.

Ah the peppermint, with its fascinating appearance and unsatisfying consumption. One would think that such an ingenious and simple design of red and white would augur better flavor and experience. The peppermint is one of life’s little disappointments.

I was reminded of the peppermint because today I ate some candy. The flavor of candy is flavor I seldom encounter as I have grown to realize these things seldom satisfy what one wants in eating: a full mouth and later on a full belly. They are not the sort of flavors one wants to use to fill oneself. But I had three today.

The circumstances were not unusual. There is nothing unusual or special about these cheats called candy. They are easy to come by; readily loathed. I was offered a bag and took the closest, which proved to be toffee. I was given two more: one orange and chocolate—not bad the orange, and the other was mint. The mint was powerful, prickly and with liquid chocolate awaiting those who should persevere. It was like a peppermint without all of the disappointment.

Now the orange is a curious flavor which I have taken to pausing over. I do not speak of the natural flavor but of some confection. I recently had, courtesy of the old girl, a concoction at Starbuck’s of orange and chocolate and coffee. I savored the orange as if for the first time—I suppose because it was unusual. Since then, the orange makes me pause. And altogether, adding up ancient and recent memory, I have learned to expect a little of orange, but to expect nothing of mint.

I savored the orange today but received more memories from the mint. Memories of what some are fond of calling reality, or one of life’s realities. Confected realities: they are the product of marketing and mechanical processes. Unreal realities because our race has an inward impulse toward that which is less, disappointing, squalid and wrong. The confected flavors of candy invite little expectation but discourage much expectation.

Instead I offer you yet another poem. A poem of the orange.

Orange Juice, an Unanticipated Epode

Refreshing, refreshing, refreshing;
Refreshing, refreshing, refreshing;
Refreshing, refreshing, refreshing,
Like fresh squeezed fresh orange juice fresh squeezed.
Ho.

Ah projects! I seem to have been caught in an enthusiasm for ordering books from the library. I need to read myself clear in order to get to less spontaneous projects. It has been a more than usually profitable bout of ordering from the library however, including Epstein, Scruton and still awaiting the chance to read Steinhardt. Reading Steinhardt is a minor project though; that ought to go quickly.

***

While in Duluth last week, with the aid of Green Mill’s coffee, I finished Scruton and Greene both. Greene’s Monsignor Quixote ended with a wan, melancholy bitterness which I knew not how to interpret. Was it directed at the priest? Was Greene’s intention to convey the sensation alone? Being curious I will have to read more Greene more carefully. I will write of Scruton; the question remains whether I will do him for the retreat or have another thing. This writing remains a minor project, mostly complete. It could turn into a greater one.

***

At Stillwater, not long ago, I purchased a well bound selection of Coleridge along with Barfield’s volume: What Coleridge Thought. Now there is a project of high interest. It is so exquisite that I think I will save it for one of my all-too-meager holidays, perhaps thanksgiving, if I can avoid being invited anywhere. It is, however, the sort of project I am likely to exchange for some fiction at the last minute. But it is the sort of project whose time will come eventually.

***

I have received rejection for everything I have sent out so far. If I have anything out still, I am not aware of it. I have not only received rejections for each thing, I have received multiple rejections for most of them. So I have been thinking a great deal about the work of re-writing. Being rejected is not always an indication of the quality. It has a lot to do with the markets and with taste. However, I think in my case the thing to do is to learn re-writing better. When I think of the sort of education I have had, the tastes I have cultivated, in short all the reasons why my prose should be inferior, then it stands to reason that re-writing is something I need to master. If Flannery O’Connor had to do it, then how much more must I. My thinking about the quality of my work has been indulgent, not sufficiently rigorous. I have an idea for a new approach I need to implement. It consists in the literal interpretation of the task: re-writing. Re-writing everything is going to constitute a very large project.

***

I have small projects I would like to implement as well. I wish I could spend more time at the MIA, especially on Thursdays. I wish I could spend more time at the Arboretum also on Thursdays. I wish I had more Thursdays. I cannot imagine what chaos my life would be if I had children to look after. When I think of it I am grateful that I have been spared these eight years, and I cannot help hoping I will be spared a few more. I am the sort of person whose need for the society of others is quickly satisfied. We had colleagues over from Ireland recently, and I took them around to see some of the sights. I did not enjoy myself quite as much I would have had I been all alone. I was glad to do it, but I noticed I was not free to let my mind follow the thoughts it would have liked to pursue. These are different enjoyments: the social ones and the better ones. For some people, all joys must be social.

***

Which reminds me I am about to enter into some social joys very soon. I am looking forward to it. The large group is very well; especially if we have been having a conversation for several years and understand each other. Through much pain we have achieved the society we call Gravitas. It has much to commend it, and I think all of us still with it are grateful for it. I am not an easy maker of friends—make of that statement what you would like. I would rather have a few good friends than an indiscriminate many. It is one of the reasons I doubt, the urging of certain women in my life notwithstanding, that I have the vocation of an elder. Modern prevailing shallow notions being what they are, my attitude is frowned upon by glib people. It is needless to say I have no confidence in their opinions. But I am looking forward to some greater friendship with the little chap from Iowa. Perhaps some social joys await us around the table.

***

This being alone is something worth considering more. Being alone is little prized, but mystics wanted to be alone. And there is the thought of alienation, of loneliness, and of being in the presence of a being completely other. This last is similar to the first two; it must be.

***

I have been listening to Tozer again on men who meet God. Remember Abraham? When God comes to cut the covenant with him a horror of great darkness comes upon him. The yawning and endless abyss of strange mystery which is God opened in some way before Abraham. He became consciously aware of God’s presence and felt a horror of great darkness. Alter has, ‘a great dark dread came falling upon him.’ Remember Jacob? Jacob met with God when he was all alone, with a stone for his pillow. When he knew that he was all alone with God he said: How dreadful is this place! Unsatisfied Jacob: the supplanter, the cheater, the swindler, the man driven to grasp what was not his and to strive and struggle all his life was reduced and frightened, sated and overwhelmed.

Jacob is a character of endless interest for me. He seems to have wanted without knowing what he wanted. All night long he wrestles with God . . . alone. When Laban met him, Jacob spoke of God as the Terror of Isaac. All three patriarchs experienced something aweful in the presence of God. And God explains who he is by saying to Moses: I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. When we are alone we are less likely to avoid the Mysterium Tremendum. In that place our unexamined lives are open to scrutiny.

***

Which is why, of all my projects, I must persist in this one. The habit of writing is the way to flee from the unexamined life. Christians have to learn to scrutinize all events if they are to confess their sins. The habit of scrutiny is a discipline of the spiritual life. If language is the technology of thought, then writing must be the means to scrutinize thought.

Can’t wait till you come, lilrabbi.

Now here’s an article of interest and note. The argument is that the difference between the music of Haydn and Mozart is a difference of temperament, essentially, which can be heard by experienced listeners. At least it is something veiled from all but casual listeners.

I think the writer of the piece is probably onto something, in so far as the difference goes. I know there must be a difference between the two. It is a given that the difference between the chaps is something you can hear in their music. I do not mean by knowing the piece before hand either. What I myself am not able to do is to hear it, even with the indications given in the article. It is something I am unable to perceive. I suppose that is due to my casual or inexperienced way of listening. There is, no doubt, a great deal in that since I only listen to the music of Mozart and Haydn because I like it. I do not listen to it out of any interest or curiosity.

I have long ago concluded that when it comes to music, I have absolutely no talent for it whatever. Were it otherwise, after years of practicing the piano in youth, and now with my fidelities to the accordion, I would have learned to read music by now. Musical notation, however, is mostly still Greek to me. It is always slow and laborious; I have no aptitude and I probably would have to work unconscionably hard at it to ever develop any ease with the stuff.

The loss is certainly great (to the world of music, that is). Just think of the things I believe exist—the audible difference between Mozart and Haydn—which I am not able to perceive and enjoy. It may be that with this chap’s direction I shall be able some day to perceive the difference. But the world is full of such things; and an aptitude for some thing will usually work out for an ineptitude for something else.

Let me strike the balance by following this meditation up with another.

***

The time has come for me to do for the chicken what Boswell did for Dr. Johnson, what Shakespeare did—in his own modest way—for the English language, what Dante did for Pope Boniface VIII.

Yes indeed. And I would like to begin with a work of no common significance, a new form that ingeniously combines the Ode and the Haiku, which I have carelessly dashed off and consider apt to the occasion.

Ode to a Country Chicken

O glorious fowl
Prowl
Scratching in the yard
Hard
I hear thy roasting.

The chicken: what a world of possibilities these simple sounds convey! The chicken would be closer to our hearts if the walls of our esophagus were not as thick as they are, you know. What fowl is nobler fried? Whose eggs are more reliable and splendid? It prompts in one the aphorism, that glorious literary form: The only thing better than a laying hen is a fried chicken. And it prompts the appropriate question: What is better than a laying hen or fried chicken? The insightful answer to which is: Both!

The only thing better than a laying hen is two. The only thing better than fried chicken is chicken cordon bleu. And in our day, superior to both is Fiesta Chicken. With Fiesta Chicken, the history of culinary endeavor may have reached its pinnacle forever. Sad news for future historians of the forward development of the idea of cuisine; happy news for eating man. Sad news for the exploratory chef; happy news for all of us who desire a good meal.

It is common in the places I have lived south of the tropic of Cancer always to find chickens turning on a spit. You can always go by and feel the heat of their cooking on hot days or on cold days, and watch the cooking and the cooked from mid-morning till the small hours, and you can hear the sound of roasting chicken. In Colombia they would serve the roasted chicken with small boiled potatoes. The potatoes had a flavor of their own requiring nothing but salt: no gravy, no sour cream or anything. (The only thing greater to potatoes, in Colombia, is the chicken.) In Mexico, I suppose, they serve the chicken with tortillas. But roasted chicken with a few simple things is all a meal; just like cold fried chicken is all the sustenance you need.

Chicken curry is better curry than beef curry; chicken noodle soup exists alone for no other meat pretends to any noodle soup; and chicken broth will make you well long before any other broth even begins to cool down. Give me chicken or give me death, to paraphrase and improve upon what the raving chap once said.

A strange relationship this philosophic bird has with death too. For in life the chicken is not much; the purveyor of wondrous eggs, to be sure, the greeter of the dawn . . . or midnight . . . of 4AM for crying out loud! In life the chicken is a curious, nearly mad creature, scratching in the yard, making unmusical clucking sounds, pecking with graceless insistence. But in death! In death the chicken lives and becomes artistic, nay, an artist. In death the chicken is a poet, a sculptor, a painter, a musician, and one may even say, a Writer, so noble is this bird in death. Oh happy fowl, oh happy, happy fowl, to paraphrase and improve upon yet another decent chap.

Think with gratitude today upon the chicken, that prince of poultry.

It is a very interesting thing to notice, when one has the leisure and inclination, the manner of eating of different peoples. At the heart of manners must be some principle of thoughtfulness. At least it seems to me that what we most try to avoid is to be displeasing to others when they are eating. To the less delicate, the problem is of little consequence; if nothing of the behavior of their fellows bothers them or puts them off their feed, why should any of their behavior bother the next person, let alone put them off their feed, especially if the grub is good? But not all are so admirably indelicate. Some even go so far as to conceive of meals as occasions for more than eating. Some, in fine, are more easily displeased.
(more…)

What is the allure of Duluth? How shall I examine it? Duluth of the lake, of Superior street paved with brick, of the ever steaming grates and manholes, Canal street, the pale and sloven natives, the cavernous and overheated restaurants, the gulls overhead, the ducks in the harbor, the architecture of the early twentieth century, the curving tangle of overpasses, the Native Americans, the discreet interstate hidden away, the hills of a harbor town.

***

The wind was strong on the harbor today. We missed the storm of the previous day so we watched a thousand foot ship enter the harbor and spin so that it would not have to turn when it was weighed full of coal. In the freshwater lakes that ship can go for a hundred years where the salt-sea ships only last a quarter of that time, we were told. We watched one of the crew of this long and long-lived ship ride a bicycle from one end to the other. We went between the high steel sides of the quays with the gravity loaders. At the top run tracks where the railroad cars dump their load into bins that can hold four car-loads each. These, in turn can drop their contents out onto ships floating on the water below. Apparently these great steel structures saw their peak of activity during WWII. They are still in use.

The grain elevators also tower over the harbor. Tons of grain come in to fill the ships. Moving cargo by water is less expensive than either train or truck, which accounts for the glory of Duluth in our age. Duluth’s tallest building is a double cement elevator capable of holding enough cement to load down two ships.

***

Change is not good. Our first experience with Bread & Breakfasts is still our best. We stayed at the Austrian Bread & Breakfast in Tacoma long ago; the old Austrian woman who ran it was a model: breakfast at the time of our choice, breakfasts none of which I disapproved, coffee one looked forward to, cream not fraudulent substitutes, excellent conversation and a well-decorated place of much sense. Ever since my attitude toward Bread & Breakfasts has soured: they give you bad coffee, they use half-n-half, the people have pallid or effete personalities, they indulge in the despicable American practice of serving pancakes or so-called french toast or other culinary eccentricities consisting of sweet food for breakfast, they either over decorate or decorate badly, they neglect to install worthwhile lighting among other things.

The place we went was a noble old Victorian house where good reading places were rather wanting, the decorating had nothing of character, it was inexpert and banal and frilly, the coffee was substandard, the cream was metallic, the breakfast gave the idea it was hardly attempted and I had the unpleasant sensation the innkeepers were christians in some evangelical way. This last probably explains all the rest. They somehow managed every possible mediocrity with expert proficiency.

Give me instead the reliable impersonality of the hotel with those distances that ocean are between oneself and the people attending, with standardized, unpretentious if uninspiring decor, with lamps and windows one can count on, where breakfast is left at one’s discretion, where Starbuck’s is five blocks away. I am willing to experiment with a place down on Canal street over Old Chicago, some vast hotel built in a warehouse; I will take the reliable and unimpeachable Radission; but never again a Bread & Breakfast for me. Not, at least, unless it is run by a foreigner.

***

We did see a foreigner in Duluth. We wanted coffee after departing the Bread & Breakfast so we went down to the canal area and looked in upon Caribou. Caribou was packed to the top of the antlers. We went along to another place my wife had noticed and found it entirely empty. The chap serving seemed to me an Italian by accent and complexion. He wore a cap and pronounced Cappuccino the way one would expect an Italian to pronounce it. There a fine cup of coffee was had.

***

Toby’s in Hinckley must have a reputation. On the way back we stopped in to see what was there. What is not there? A restaurant, a bakery, a gift shop, a lounge, a diner, a truck stop, Americana, and crowds of disheveled travelers. The bakery has a constant crowd before its display; there is no wait for the restaurant but no tables to spare either. I got my cappuchino (a coffee shop too!) in a mug—the mug is the ultimate way for such a receptacle to resist any aesthetic grace; no widening at the rim, no tapering at the bottom, nothing of character on that prosaic cylinder with its predictable, thick handle other than a stupid joke printed on it, or an advertisement, or worse, an announcement calculated to open up a dreary conversation—and I ordered some diner fare. Somewhere I have read an account that leaves me thinking gloriously of this meal, perhaps in a Nick Adam’s story: an oval of griddled ground beef, sauteed onions and gravy along with hash browns and coleslaw on the side. It was hot, sufficient and the hash browns tasted like cheap oil.

We had a table located right where anybody entering or departing the restaurant must pass. It was a good place for observing both the clientele and the harried staff attending. One of the bakers was wandering near, answering some questions in a slow, dull-witted way. An older woman and a very young lad matched people to tables in a harried manner that suggested polite drowning men. Our waitress was perfectly morosely polite. (It seems her shift ended before we were through; not many bites into our meal we got the check and instructions about who would help us should we require further assistance.) And I was satisfied so I left our departed waitress the sort of tip I did not think my wife would approve. It is not bad service that I dislike: it is when my expectations are not met that I object.

***

Less than a mile from Hinkley there are five or six blasted willows by the side of the road. No tree seems to have suffered so much from the curse on the ground as the willow. No tree seems to have suffered less than the aspen. We saw the aspens bright yellow, cheerful under the low clouds like a mouth full of golden teeth. South of Hinkley the colors are more varied than north. North you have green pine, yellow aspen and grey empty trees. But south you have the red of the oaks, the orange of some other chaps, in wondrous varieties of all the kinds I have not yet learned to tell (black walnut or is it black hickory, and elms, various oaks, birch kind and ashes and such).

***

My wife agreed to drive, so I read. I finished Scruton’s elevated volume, his argument for high culture. It had the effect of making me rather more than usually critical when under its influence. Having dispatched Scruton and his misgivings about cinema which amounted to an objection to photography as art, which was rather well executed and rendered me even more ill-disposed to tolerate photography in general, I read Epstein who talked about the banalities of traveling and being a tourist. Epstein writes the engaging essay; his company in travel is pleasant. I would not recommend the company of Scruton, as reading him is likely to heighten your critical faculties at moments when it is not strictly helpful. Epstein has a sense of humor which also wears off on the traveler’s view and renders observation more tolerable.

***

Duluth, Duluth. I want to go live in Duluth. Everything about it is magical. It is a great city without being very large; it has hills like Seattle but also the cold; it has a downtown like Minneapolis but also the harbor; it has many great houses, great buildings, great places. It also has a casino, Bread & Breakfasts and probably other such places of squalor. The newer buildings have not overshadowed the old buildings; everything is there descending the hill in tiers. And always from the manholes, from the grills of the drains comes the steam, and the pavements gleam, and the fog creeps over the harbor below, and if you look down Superior street at the right moment, all of the lights will be green.

Joe Montana, what a name! It sounds fleet, American, unaffected. If I were of America I would want to have the name: Joe Montana.

We were talking about something—politics—and so the Cowboys of Dallas came up. They are the team of America so it makes sense. (How can you not like the Cowboys, one of the American chaps at our work asked once, they’re America’s team; what are you, a communist?) I mentioned that the Oilers of Houston had had a quarterback called Moon one time and was told there were no longer Oilers in Houston. In an effort to demonstrate what I once knew about American football I remembered the Broncos of Denver had a quarterback called Elway, and that the Forty-Niners of San Francisco had the great Joe Montana, fleet, American and unaffected.

The Cowboys of Dallas were much in the conversation of Monday. Now they will meet the Patriots of Foxborough—which explains why they claim the greater geographical area of New England. What will come to pass in America when America’s team plays the Patriots? I cannot help feeling it is the sort of question Joe Montana would have laughed at winningly and dealt with deftly.

I will bring him to meet us in a piece of fiction: the great Joe Montana, winsome, fleet as a gazelle, swift with his laser pistol.

***

October hesitated. Joe Montana laughed and pushed the Gligmatroid Thug aside. The Gligmatroid Thug picked himself up clumsily and tried to hit Joe Montana with a bottle from behind. Joe Montana was watching him all the while in the mirror over the counter. Without turning around he seized the Gligmatroid Thug’s arm and threw him over the counter and against a refrigerator. Joe Montana laughed and ordered a burger and some coffee.

“I’ll have a burger and a coffee with that,” he said. Those were his words.

Everybody made way for October, and the Stupendian cook behind the counter gave him a quizzical look.

“I’ll have the same,” October said, and Joe Montana’s golden laugh filled the dingy space-port diner like unexpected sunlight.

“What are you doing for Christmas,” Joe Montana asked. “Got any family?”

October did not look up as he added cream and sugar to the otherwise not altogether potable (la palabra ‘impotable’ no existe en el Ingles) coffee that steamed before him. “No, I don’t have any plans,” he said casually.

“Good,” Joe Montana said. “I don’t either. How about we run the gauntlet on the load of Zunu Herring bombs?”

“Fine,” October said, noticing the clamor of the diner had died down after Joe Montana’s last question. October added, “Tralfalmador.”

Joe Montana nodded and bit into his burger.

As October would find out later, one of the Federation’s goons was slouched in a corner. The goon was slouched over like he was asleep, but he was far from inattentive.

***

I have been thinking that the thing to write would be a Science Fiction memoir. A fictional memoir is what I have in mind, with science in it, like aliens. I may have found the ultimate name: Running the Gauntlet to Tralfalmador: a Science Fiction Memoir, by Joe Montana, earthling. The attempt would expand my horizons.

Are not books wonderfully metaphysical? True, some people are absorbed by matters of binding and of printing, which are important parts of a book. One wants a pleasing and durable book on most occasions. But anybody who merely deals in books as books and not for the joys of reading is being foolish. The signs and symbols of writings mediate the essences which the reader pursues. What is in the book is beyond the pages and letters; readers plunge through these. Our memories of reading are not mere memories of consequent letters and strings of words, or of the shapes of paragraphs, but of places and feelings, situations and characters, everything but letters and pages and bindings. We remember things imaginary which we have learned in mystical communion with the author.

***

I have been listening to Annie Dillard’s An American Childhood at work. I am listening to it because our writing class is taught by a woman who is interested in memoirs. She is interested in the voice of the author, and I think part of what she means is that she wants to see the world through that person’s eyes. I think that if Lukacs is right when he says fiction is declining and there is a great appetite for history, then the memoir must be ascending particularly. The peculiarity of the memoir is that it is an internal exploration. In our age people still think in the categories of Objectivity and Subjectivity. If they will not have one, they will have the other. Hence the appeal of the memoir. And I do not think it is all bad, not because I think the alternatives are objectivity or subjectivity, but because I agree with Lukacs that “all human knowledge is inevitably personal and participatory.” Annie Dillard has some interesting anecdotes, some fascinating observations, and a peculiar love for matters of language.

***

In the September NC there was an article by Joseph Epstein summarizing the last twenty five years of American and English literary endeavor. It is an essay I highly recommend. As a result of that and of a disparaging review of his latest collection of essays, I have ordered two of Epstein’s books from the library and have been enjoying the reading of them greatly. He is a master, and if you are interested in reading and enjoying good literary essays from our day, go forth looking for a collection by Joseph Epstein. For one thing, he will expand your understanding of literature. For another, he will show you what a good essay is like. And who, in our day, does not need study how to write better essays?

***

I mentioned Lukacs. I finished his volume Churchill: Visionary. Statesman. Historian. Especially worthwhile is the last chapter on Churchill’s funeral. Unfortunately, Lukacs quotes directly out of his journal without improving some of the things that he knows might have been improved. Still, his judgment is probably better than mine is. In any event, what he does in that last chapter is Lukacs at his best: he recounts the events of the day, even seemingly insignificant circumstances, and meditates on their meaning, showing how the day was everywhere fraught with the significance of the main event, all because human knowledge is inevitably personal and participatory. I do not mean by this to suggest that this is the only thing Lukacs does well. He does many, many things well. The book, as all of them, is not only good history but instructive in the practice of historiography. Nevertheless, what he does in that last chapter is really what he does best; it is his poetry.

***

I have not gotten to very much fiction recently. I mean, when I can see my way to it, to get on with Scruton on culture (Oh writing! Oh reflecting! Oh unwieldy schedule! Oh constraints of having a job!). But I also want to start on Graham Greene’s adaptation of Don Quixote. I have some of Doris Lessing’s Science Fiction that has been sitting around. I am sure she has her ideologies but now that she has landed a Nobel Prize for literature one is a bit more eager to prowl through her pages. Enough of this!