The novel is near completion, but I was suspecting that I might need to put all the writing projects away for a brief while; and this morning God confirmed it by sending me some momentous gastric upset to keep me moaning in bed all morning. (If you think you are likely to vomit in the near future, do not swallow those bright red strawberry Tums, because they will terrify you coming back up.) J. took care of me until I was well enough to come downtown and get some carrot juice and open up Aristotle’s Physics, which is where I’m at now and will not be tempted elsewhere from. He always cheers me up:
Again men propagate men, but bedsteads do not propagate bedsteads; and that is why they say that the natural factor in a bedstead is not its shape but the wood—to wit, because wood and not bedstead would come up if it germinated.
