[...] the patients there couldn't remember the names for things, televisions, water, doors ... and so under Gramma Lenore's influence he had them identified with their function? [...] So the door is 'What we go from room to room through'? Water is 'What we drink, without color'? Television is 'What we watch Lawrence Welk on'--Lawrence Welk being primitive, undefined, even in syndication, no problem with Lawrence Welk. How my mother and all the rest came after a fashion to relearn the words they needed, via function, via what the things named were good for? And then Gramma Lenore noticing that the one component of the facility this method couldn't be applied to was the patients themselves, because they had no function, no use, weren't good for anything, really at all? No? She told me this drove her up the wall. They had no use at all. What? No, the derivative comes from the pineals of cattle. We use cattle pineals. Rather we would if we could. Now, just wait, please. [...]

[...] Care for a Corfu nut, by the way? No? They're quite good. I got them in Canada, fishing. [...]

A madness, last night, in the fulgent bath of the Midwestern moon.

[...] Modern party-dance is simply writhing to suggestive music. It is ridiculous, silly to watch and excruciatingly embarrassing to perform. It is ridiculous, and yet absolutely everyone does it, so that it is the person who does not want _to do the ridiculous thing who feels out of place and uncomfortable and self-conscious ... in a word, ridiculous. Right out of Kafka: the person who des not want to do the ridiculous thing is the person who is ridiculous. (Idea: Kafka at an Amherst/Mt. Holyoke mixer, never referred to by name, only as "F.K.," only one not dancing ...) Modern party-dance is an evil thing. [...]