Rain. The tiles on the roof opposite glistening wet.

*

Finally made it through the second half of Minghella's version of Highsmith's Ripley. Good as the film is it's not one I watch with pleasure. (Some three weeks have elapsed since I watched the first 50 minutes or so - and that was after abandoning it a year ago).

*

The past week has been given over to reading Ashbery's Rivers and Mountains and (inevitably) straying around (his essays and - last night and today - John Clare). It's strange to read such a very English poet through Ashbery's eyes - opening facets I'd probably not otherwise have noticed. And the point about the distance of poet to the poem - that's something that hadn't really occurred to me before.

*

The heating's on & the radiators are hot. A sign of the year turning.

*

It's interesting that Minghella has Tom kill Freddie with a bust of some Emperor. Convinces me of my earlier reading of Highsmith's novel in terms of an American searching for identity in the Classical past. Strange ghostings, too: the actor playing Peter is a kind of Alan Rickman: Jamie (the same languid well-spoken manner). And at one point Tom at the piano has some resemblance to Juliet Stevenson: Nina (it's the hair falling forward or the jaw). Films haunting each other.

*

Many things I could (& probably should) be doing.

*