It was raining again and that doesn't seem to have been a winter. night the Moon was orange Like a harvest Moon. The clouds were passing intermittently across the face. It was a thing of very great beauty. I was driving. I was driving fast. I was driving fast on the wet road. The beauty of the Moon again and again draws my eyes from the road again and again and because I am driving. Because I'm driving fast. It all has to be very disjoint.

It was still raining again and I went out to buy a bag of sunflower seed. And as I was talking to Barry to buy it four people came in. And Barry wanted to show off a cockatoo that he was selling. He wanted to show it off to me. He wanted to get me to treat the bird as a toy and I would have refused because it is not at all so. I was about to refuse to take the bird from him when in came four people. In came four people who had dressed up to come out. They came in chatting to each other about how clever everything is in them. And they went frightened up to the bird and treated it like a toy. And that was what Barry wanted from them. And that was all they wanted it to be. If they could have changed what the bird was that was what they would have changed it to. And one of them was the man who decided to have a silly voice to say pretty boy in that he wasn't. These people in being no doubt harmless and it be no doubt all they could be to be genuine as they saw it. But trying to be all they could be to be genuine is not enough. Only to be real is enough and this was not. This was quite obscene. So I left fairly quickly. I went away. This is not for me a right to even try to change. That could not be so. But I need have no contact with what it is. I need not stay. I did not. This was people wanting animated toys to flatter themselves with. Will they play thinks the bird. Does he talk says the man. Can they think it comes to me. These people are just playing at being human. And they Are not learning from it, they are just filling time. An endless game of monopoly. Take a chance it says and all the chances are controlled.

On the television was a foreign language program designed to teach people Spanish, Or allow them to forget the English or something sort. It was full of people speaking Spanish and subtitles speaking English. And the subtitles asked the people in English and Spanish respectively what it was. What it was most. What it was that they liked to do most. And the answer came in Spanish and then in subtitles he came. 'What I like most is sleeping'.

In me this would be nothing at all. In me if it was anything it would be dreaming or it would be waking up. That can be very good indeed. It would not be sleeping at all. Perhaps it is in the translation but I do not think so. 'I like sleeping most of all'.

Last night was very strange. It was a very strange night. There were very small groups and that was all. They remained so. Everything remained so. It was all so all along. That is How it was. Then later it emptied out slowly until there were only a few. Then there was some talk about sex because some there were homosexual and some were heterosexual. And so there was talking to pull each other's legs gently. Except that it was not always so gentle. This is what it was and already into the air were people talking all from a viewpoint of prejudice. Both on one side or the other but to be fair it was mostly on the side of the heterosexuals who finally lost the bout in a points decision but they were all very young for now.

Then it was quiet for a time as spaces were put together. I did not like all the spaces that were made and I did not condone but neither did I have any right to change them so neither did I do that.

Afterwards I sat alone with Peter for quite a long time and I started to talk about the way I saw the situation With drug-o developing and he did not say much except nod occasionally and perhaps he can grow a perspective that is better even though before it was good. Perhaps that is all it may not be better from me but it may start to think about it all again and that may be all to be needed.

And then it was all about quality. It is that self respect comes out of quality. It is about hyperaesthetics. It is about tea made from melted snow water. It is snow collected from flowering plum branches. It is collected in the moonlight. This is quality not just from the tap but in caring enough to make the surrounding images rich. It is not that the taste of that tea really is different but that the quality of the experience is so much more. It was the autobiography of cheese. It was that cheese can be prepacked from the supermarket, but that the camembert is made by an old lady. An old French lady makes it. An old French lady dressed in black. She has a cow. It is a lazy cow. The cow eats the poor hay and gives some milk. It is a happy lazy warm brown cow in the dappled shade. It is cow on a mountain. It is a dry mountain. Made entirely of rock it is a mountain. There is a stone house by the mountain which has a cave. There is an old brown cow to give the milk. The flowers grow in the poor hay. The old French lady dressed in black takes the milk and makes the cheese. The cheese is made and taken to the wooden racks that stand in the cave and that is where it is put until it is ready to be ready. The old French woman dressed in black takes out the white cheese and cuts it in parts for lunch on the side of the house to look at the cow and the mountain. It is a cheese making sky. This is not prepacked for the supermarket because this is quality, not really cheese. This is caring.

The old french woman is married to her husband's small brown feet. The feet tread the grapes. The wine ferments in the oak casks. One day it arrives that the wine is ready to be bottled. It is bottled. It is good. It is stood in the cave by the cheese and one day it will come that it is better. These are the feet. This is the meadow. Here is the fragrance. This is the bouquet. Look at the cow. There is the house. There is the cave. This is the sky. Such a good wine it is to be drunk. So much of this good cheese is only to smile. So much good wine it is essential to drink it. Too much to do so is essential because this is too quality . The old man and the old woman smiling at the cheese. This is to be drunk for three weeks And It is all quality. None of this is lager in a bar from a plastic tap. That is nothing at all by comparison. That is just nothing. It is no thing. There is only hiding in alcohol the cheapest way here. There is no rejoicing in that. It is just fear. I still don't drink in bars except for orange juice and sometimes in order to think of the old french woman and her husband's feet I drink Perrier water. That is all.

In the end this is what I talked about. If it can't be quality of life I will do without. If I can't do without I will find enough to make it myself into quality. And that I enjoy life because that is how self respect is made. And I spoke about Min and Lope who are the only two I know married for whom it is as it should be and that is self respect and so totally respect for each other. And for them anything can happen to come between them. If it is wrong it can be said so and accepted so. Because whatever comes between them it does not make any emotional space at all. Both know their own fallibility, so there is acceptance. The emotional space is never at all between them. I like them best because they can be completely honest and not have to be anything but pleasant and caring about that. It is all honesty through respect. And that was what it was about with quality. Min and Lope are both very old now and that is how long it had taken them to get there.

That was what it was about quality and why it was not alcohol for its own sake at all. It was why amyl nitrate was so much nothing and empty and all the other drugs. That was why it was all so. And so I talked about it and that was what I explained it to be.

And then it was twenty to five in the morning and I had to go because I was keeping Peter up to stay and he had to work later to a time. But then in walked Cary being lonely. Now Cary has with him strongly the same problem that he has always had because Cary says nobody loves him and what he means is that nobody is making love to him. Because Cary has lost that there is any difference he can only feel the emptiness because of that. But that is how it is for Cary. I am not at all sure that anything can be done to make that seen by Cary. Cary thinks that nobody will love him because nobody will make love with him. He resents that. But Cary has never really been himself except as a collection of reactions to the world's stimuli. That is all he has ever chosen to see himself. And so he resents that. So when Cary is sad it is very late in the morning and it is the same problem it always was and nothing can be done. Cary can use amyl nitrate because that is all there can be for him. He has no way at all to see quality. So that is all it can be in Cary is lager from a plastic tap and amyl nitrate. That is all. These are the ways in which it is possible to be sad and to shed tears. There are so many always more and more. They always the same tears that are shed for the world again and again without any help. That is how it comes to be cried dry and to look for a positive way to replace crying to try to do something because the quality is in there trying with right mind. And perhaps it may not be as it seems and it is possible to succeed. But if not it is still the quality that matters and the quality is in trying and in the tears before.