Train station, bullied by elements—the wind seemed genuinely intent on dislodging my delicately poised cap—I set my mind the task of solving that great imponderable. (By the way, I've moved to the sheltered part, having decided to risk the inevitable hobo stench; giggling girls, thinking it unoccupied, spy my well-sculpted head in the window and make new plans—martyr spared 'em the funk.) Some chilly minutes pass unassumingly and, despite having my formidable gaze obstructed by unaesthetic beige, I manage to score a few good thoughts. (I have now moved out of the shelter, almost to board.)

The next station is Dennis. Shame. As the train rumbles back to motion (not strictly true—I was too slow in writing that sentence) I find myself making some progress on my self-imposed problem. I was far from a good answer, indeed very far, but I move in obsessions; don't be surprised if I have the thing firmly wrapped by week's end. Plus, I'm a whiz at suffering obstacles. My biological mother once told me that when you hit a wall, whatever its context, go hang at Tabby's and come back tomorrow with fresh eyes. (Tabby was a childhood flame from four to fifteen: a yeasty tomboy with scarlet locks and peppered skin, she now maintains an unpleasant trans-Pacific accent somewhere in Canada, with my poor adolescent heart tucked in a shoebox beneath her bed. "Hoeniger asked about my first love. I said 'Pale, mercurial and devilish; had two loves'—how's that?", a line from her letter, May 24. That's her handwriting; that's the way she writes.) Not having Tabby at hand, I decided instead to have a particularly restful night's sleep when I got home.

Now we're forward some three hours (my errand kept me from chronicling the intervening). My roomy black notebook has given way to a squat yellow pocketbook. I'm already halfway down the page. I should mention that this marks a second journey, having returned home for approximately ten minutes before a gate-crashing opportunity presented itself and ushered me back out into the Cruel. These piling mundanities run the risk of overshadowing my ponderings, but I added a few useful observations along the way, most afforded by lulls. A brief glimpse from a fellow passenger (merely by proximity) and I'm back outside myself, noting, for no particular reason, the onlooker's green caffeinated drink. Now we pause at the neon ferris wheel, Ernst & Young high-rise to my right. I look at my watch: fifteen minutes to Crown. The evening disappears in a swamp-green haze of inferior remakes and sulky companions. Tabby infests my dreams.

Hugh and the Times