February 25

It's flaking; it's snowing...

One massive hail of the GRAD missiles in the morning, followed up by a desultory firing random singles. But, after the first attack, my family was in the Underground, and I at the Club.

All the same over and over again: jiggling walls and quaking vinyl sheets in the windows of the Renderers' with the usual diuretic effect afterwards. ("Pissing when scared, ain't you?" was a cod-saying among my classmates at high school. Many a truth is said in jest. Close explosions do tell a number on my bladder.)

At eleven am Lenic dropped in on his way to the downhill town dragging along things from his flat to his father-in-law's. And he had decided to leave his draft coat of arms in the Renderers' room: the competition jury chairman was too busy to arrange an appointment.

Half-an-hour later Rita came in. That big shot of an Arcadic's pal pronounced the papers she had provided not valid enough to give her the evacuation pass-bill. There were explosions outdoors so she lingered until 12 o'clock to go out together with me. I saw her to the crossing by the Theater.

Then, I was engaged in shipping of cutlery and the warmed-up dinner to the Underground.

After lunch, one page from Joyce.

By the by, in the previous night's dream, I was reading a page from THE ARABIAN NIGHTS. The text, just as in this here reality, was printed in Armenian. It was one of the erotic fairy-tales wherein the protagonist, when emphatically depicting his sensations at the ejaculation, uses a purely Joycean antic—coining up a word of four doubled Armenian"Ձ"[dz]. It looked something like this: 'And then I felt ՁձՁձՁձՁձ'

After the aforesaid page from ULYSSES, I—a weak and sinful being—had a nap.

Getting up, I cooked the supper of unpeeled boiled potatoes, boiled a kettle of water, and took all that over to the Underground.

Yoga. Supper.

The water-walk's ahead.

Thanks to the outflux of the townsfolk, there are no constant queues at the most inconvenient water-heads (the "Suicide's Spring" with its 65 ice-coated steep steps is one of the kind).

The pawn-queue at the Three Taps was scrapped altogether and replaced with an alive one. Which is much shorter.

To make the long story short – Good night.