Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson, Steven Moore Page B

Japanese.
    No matter where one situated them, how could there be any way in which any two objects could be any distance from each other except equidistant?
    Even if there were some miraculous manner in which I were able to move this house, for instance, surely it would still end up being exactly the same distance from the other house that the other house would be from this.
    Although in that case this one might at least land where it could finally be seen from the other after all.
    As a matter of fact I actually once did see this house from that one anyway, now that I think about it.
    What happened was that there was a fire in my potbellied stove, on an afternoon when I decided to take a walk through the woods.
    Looking back, I could see the smoke above the trees.
    There is my house, being what I thought when I looked.
    I have noted the persistence of this sort of thinking before, I believe.
    Doubtless I would have expressed an identical thought on the night when my earlier house was turning into little more than an upside down glow on the clouds, in fact, had I had a rowboat to express it in at the time.
    Perhaps all such thoughts might very well fall into the same category as the thought that there is somebody at a window in a painting when there is nobody at the window in the painting, since I would appear to have verified that paintings are never basically what one thinks of them as being either.
    Then again it is perhaps questionable that I have verified any such thing.
    Continuing to think in such terms one might as well ask if I had ever truly walked to the other house to begin with.
    Undeniably I walked to the other house, since I can distinctly remember the poster, which is taped to the living room wall.
    The poster shows Jane Avril and three other Paris dancers. In fact it also lists all of the dancers' names, including hers.
    The other names that the poster lists are Cleopatre and Gazelle and Mlle. Eglantine.
    Well, I have a vague recollection that I may have spoken about this before, even.
    On the other hand there is no way of telling if the poster had been painted before or after Toulouse-Lautrec may have handled my stick, of course.
    There is nothing in Jane Avril's expression which gives any hint about her affair with Brahms either, as it happens.
    Still, one remembers other paintings of her in which she appears more than sensitive enough to have attracted him.
    Unfortunately there is no life of Brahms in the other house in which I might have looked up more about this.
    The life of Beethoven would have been of no help, one presumed.
    The title of the life of Beethoven in the other house is Beethoven, by the way.
    The title of the life of Brahms that I did once look into, insofar as I can remember, was A Life of Brahms.
    Well, doubtless I could readily verify this, there being a second copy of the life of Brahms still accessible right where I am.
    Then again, what one is now perhaps forced to wonder is if the title of the life of Brahms would remain A Life of Brahms if there did not happen to be that second copy still at hand.
    If there were no more copies accessible anywhere of Anna Karenina, in other words, would its title still be Anna Karenina?
    I am perhaps less than certain what I mean by that question.
    Still, it would undeniably appear that I have more than once thought about a life of Brahms when I was not seeing a life of Brahms.
    For that matter I have more than once thought about The Recognitions, by William Gaddis, when I have not seen a copy of The Recognitions by William Gaddis in twelve or fifteen years.
    I have even thought about William Gaddis himself, when I have not seen William Gaddis for twelve or fifteen years either.
    In fact I may never have seen William Gaddis.
    Moreover I have also thought about T. E. Shaw and I do not even know who T. E. Shaw was.
    Although having finally remembered that Marco Antonio Montes de Oca wrote poetry, perhaps I can at least safely assume that Sor Juana Inés