I found myself, the last time I was writing a bit of a paper I've been agonizing over, using the word 'constellation' to talk about a group of concepts, so with vaguely aspirational hopes (ooh, I might be saying something even smarter than I thought, etc.), thinking of Adorno's 'constellational' epistemology, I turned to 'Constellation' in Negative Dialectics, thinking to quote it. You will note that I am not quoting it here. Things did not turn out as hoped. Maybe someday. In the meantime I am just writing 'vividly', ha. Please shoot me.

'Your English
is not specific enough
As a writer of poems
you show yourself to be inept not to say
usurious'

You have no idea (well, probably a pretty good idea) how pleased I am that:

1. William Carlos Williams wrote a poem called 'To a Lovely Old Bitch'.

2. The poem is addressed to Sappho.

Which show was the first thing to come to mind today when I wondered what shows have had major characters who were depressed. (I just watched the second season, which makes a pretty determined run at it up to the point where Angel sleeps with Darla, trailing off after.) My second and third guesses were Buffy (after she's brought back) and NYPD Blue (Sipowicz has to have been depressed at some point).

What exactly is wrong with people that they come all incredulous like when I say I like to watch Angel?

Which song I haven't heard in years and years as far as I know, by the way.

I love memory.

The other day I heard something that I thought was the Bangles' cover of 'Hazy Shade of Winter', and even though it wasn't, it was enough to get whatever parts of the song I could remember stuck in my head. I don't actually know if that's the correct title, but I prefer not to look it up. As it continues to stick, I may eventually remember enough of the words, or remember them clearly enough, to feel confident about the title. This is probably something like the little joke in the Investigations in the 'private language' section ('section') about buying multiple copies of the newspaper in order to verify the news (the parallel being, verifying or justifying one's guess at a train departure time by consulting one's mental image of the time table). But I'm not shaken, Wittgenstein. Hearing a song in your head is kind of like singing it aloud - your memory of it can be different when doing it as opposed to just recalling it. Once you start singing, you can keep going. You can remember parts in the middle that you would otherwise be unable to. (I think it works the same way with the train departures too, but there the story is more complicated.)

On Sunday I was happy to see that we have reached the time of year where fallen leaves cover so much that the sidewalks turn into almost solid blocks of color, extending away into the distance. I don't know why this sort of thing, taken whole - the entire scene, with the temperature, the texture of the air, me, the color of the sky - always seems so reassuring to me. I like it more than almost any similar sort of moment in some other season. It's hard for me to feel at home in spring, and certainly summer. Winter has its advantages.

Played records today by: Ted Leo, Robert Johnson, A Tribe Called Quest, Sonic Youth. I did not repeat any but the Tribe, and that not much. This was actually, then, a relatively eventful day for records. I used to listen to so much more music.