I stopped my Rambler American driving home from visiting my sister in Santa Rosa, where I watched TV and read about Picasso from a book I bought this afternoon on Stony Point Road, a rough road, in the country between Santa Rosa and Cotati where I live, and I decided to clean up my house and start the study I’ve wasted my life for, but now I’ve stopped beside this dark country road with my car’s lights on, sitting inside, listening to a dog bark in a barn alone out in the red field, and now a great silver milk truck comes upon me like a train, and the lights of the city have fallen on the horizon and illuminate the low clouds, blue, not black, the barn in silouhette, two naked poplar trees, and me—I’ve decided: I stopped driving because something came upon me, and now it’s gone; I hear it rumbling off on the road behind me, while I think of starting up again, and getting home.
11 June 1974