In other words, this Bible has ended up in my possession, rather than in my brother’s, though it is inscribed to both of us, on the inside flap, and though I still think of it as his and mine, rather than mine only.

The copy of the Bible I happen to have been reading from is one that has belonged to me since I was nine years old. It was given to me and to my brother, by our uncle Jim, on the occasion of our confirmation, way back when our family was still living in Australia, and somehow I have hung onto it, or anyway have ended up with it, in the course of our family moving from one place to another, and in the course of, also, us siblings going out and starting our lives, separate from one another, in different cities and regions of this country, once we reached college and adulthood.

While I was reading I was lying on the carpet in the office, with my head against a pillow that I’d positioned against the wall, and my legs stretched out into the middle of the room. I would read a chapter or a handful of verses, and then put the Bible down for a minute to look at my phone, or to think about what I’d read. Most of it I was familiar with, but I nonetheless found it challenging and edifying. Paul is known for his zeal, as he should be, but people sometimes forget, I think, how intelligent he was.

Today I’ve been reading the “Letter of the Apostle Paul to the Romans”, from the New Testament of the Bible. I like Paul for many reasons, one of which is that he was a very good writer. He was also a tentmaker, if you want to know what he did for a trade. A better man than me in every way, I would say.

I think of this now for no good reason, or anyway no reason that I’m able to put into words. I’m making associative leaps.

Which isn’t to say the two are opposing powers, or anyway that they are equal powers who happen to be opposed, when it comes to the fate of humankind. Certainly they are opposed, but the Holy Spirit is God, whereas Satan is merely a creature. Whatever power Satan does have he has only because God permits it; that is, he has any power due only to God’s permissive will.

In the Bible, Satan is sometimes referred to as the Accuser, or the Scatterer. He is also sometimes referred to as the Father of Lies. The Holy Spirit, on the other hand, is sometimes referred to as the Advocate, the Helper, or the Comforter.

I suppose the answer would have something to do with my divorce and my annulment. But it might also have to do with other things, things I’m not aware of on a conscious level.

Grief at what, you might ask, and that would be a fair question. Though I don’t know if I know how to answer it.

I think the reason I’m writing this book is grief, even if I didn’t know that that was the reason when I began it, or even if there was another reason at first, or no reason.

I drove him in the car to a nearby park, and when I released him he darted into a pile of dried leaves. I’d spoken a few words to him as we’d been driving, trying to be funny and, I guess, to keep him calm.

I caught the mouse, believe it or not. Yesterday, while I was sitting at my desk in the office near the window, writing, I heard some noises coming from the plastic trap on the counter near the stove in the kitchen, and getting up from my chair and going into the kitchen I saw that the mouse had indeed entered the trap and had triggered the little door, or metal flap, that had enclosed him in it. He wasn’t as frightened as I’d expected him to be, but merely was turning around and trying to get out of the area where he was confined. When I neared the counter he stopped what he was doing and observed me through the plastic roof of the trap. He looked exactly as you’d expect a mouse to look.

Tomorrow I’m going to post a photo of the cover of that Kerouac book, Satori in Paris. It has on it a silhouette of the Eiffel Tower against a painted red sky and a blue foreground. So it isn’t realistic, exactly, but more like a collage of something that could have been realistic; it reminds me of that word ‘technicolor’.

The picture I posted today is of an automobile that I always see parked in front of a house a couple blocks from where A. and I live. The house has a desolate quality to it, though I don’t think it is abandoned, and the automobile looks to me as if it is from the 1950s. I took the photo of it last night, at dusk, when I was walking home from a Mass at the cathedral. I’d stopped on the sidewalk across the street from it.

I’ve started taking photographs and posting them on my Instagram account, like I’d said I was thinking of doing, though I haven’t been including, in their foregrounds or vistas, the little statuette of Our Lady that I’d told you I was possibly going to include, because I decided against bringing that statuette out here with me, to Cheyenne, because her crown kept falling off and I didn’t want to lose it, or break it, while traveling with it. I know I said I was intending to fix that crown, with glue, but I hadn’t found time to do so before I departed. I’ll have to do that when I return.

The mouse repellant I got from Home Depot the other day doesn’t seem to be having any effect on the mouse that has been living somewhere behind the stove in A.’s and my kitchen, so this morning, after Mass, I drove to that store again and purchased a small, plastic trap which I have baited with peanut butter and have positioned against the wall on the countertop near the stove, where I have occasionally seen the mouse scurry. I will let you know what happens with it, if anything does. The trap is designed to allow you to catch the critter and then release it, rather than kill it.

Kerouac was often experiencing ‘satori’, of course. I mean that the bulk of his literary output was a dramatization of one satori after another, rather than the elaboration or invention of a plot. Which I do not mean as a criticism, or barb. Of all the writers I have read in my life, he might be the one for whom I feel the most affection.

Satori is a Japanese word that means sudden awakening, or enlightenment.

One of those books is A Manual for Cleaning Women, by Lucia Berlin. Another of them is Satori in Paris, by Jack Kerouac.

I forgot my copy of Don Quixote back in New York, so I haven’t been able to read it while I’ve been out here. Instead I’ve been glancing through paperbacks that are on the table in the parlor, and on the mantel above the fireplace.