Niedecker - reading into the 'For Paul' poems and thinking what must have fuelled the writing despite all efforts to keep the biographical Self out of the picture (poems ostensibly 'addressed' to Zukofsky's legitimate son after Niedecker herself had aborted the child she was to have with LZ).

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Ed Baker's correspondence with Cid Corman in a series of web files - a tip off from Ed himself:

Yes, also, quiet is good. Don’t overstate. Let a certain bareness enrich the whole. Let the sun enter. The contingencies others provide inevitably. Space in which to breathe – or from which. Another (empty) center. (Corman to Baker)

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Ikea - to buy a mattress and a basic table top. There's a fire alarm and so I spend half an hour out in the car park with everyone else wondering what's going on.

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Begin a new notebook - the larger one has gone stale and is proving too cumbersome; the smaller black one has become too precious (i.e. self conscious). I need something to flex the muscles in, not caring. Easier said than done, of course.

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Someone sends me pictures of their three dogs on the bed. Is this Junk mail? A Blog follower showing solidarity with the kitten pics?

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I write to Geof Huth. His post on Nico Vassilakis - coming after a week of my plundering his Blogs for various leads and ideas - makes me think I really ought to make contact. It's so difficult, though, to strike the right note in an e-mail between a friendly nod and weirdo intrusion.

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The swing two gardens away makes a noise like a mule being strangled. It's hard to believe no one else's nerves are being set on edge.

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One strawberry - red and slightly damaged - from the plants we just stuck in the ground a month or so ago. Evidence that Nature finds a way against all odds.

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Looks like we're in for a hot & sunny week.