[So far, lacking proper time:]
I drove independently listening to the classical station and the news and arrived a little after 1pm.
A man with white hair (I recognized him from previous visits) let me in; I had trouble explaining why I was there as I thought it would be implicit and unless I prepare myself, my verbal reasoning escapes me.
There were three people in the office, all women. I signed in with Tracy: her eyes and skin were tired like she spent all weekend at one of the man-made beaches (past child-bearing age).
I waited, once again, in the area outside with chairs and magazines and framed articles and pictures arbitrarily torn out of the magazines. There was a picture of a pretty blond though unexceptional actress (she's already becoming oblivious) and a picture of Tommy Lee Jones.
(x had a dinner at her house the night before. She had a young boy from Oregon there to film everything, and another boy with a big wooden earing working on the sound: the boom poked into our noses and above our heads as we sat at the table. She rarely invites me to dinner. A radio host was there; I had driven him home a few nights before, at x's request, and he asked whether I would be at the dinner that evening, so she texted me. The topic of conversation was oblivion. After everything was over, we were sitting at the table alone; Ulysses came up at dinner so I said something about how I didn't feel it was inaccessible, even though I never finished it, because it was accurate. I was about to stand up, but he brought the conversation back to this and then we began to talk of Infinite Jest which is another book I find incredible for its accuracy but haven't finished. He said the problem with Infinite Jest is that each time you put it down for a period, you have to start over from the beginning. I said this wasn't a concern for me: I could open it anywhere: even though there are places where repetition is important and it is difficult for one's memory to grasp all the reverberations unless you are playing close attention. It's not like Magic Mountain where the repetition is so pleasurable. He asked me which translation I'd read (Modern Library) as a new one just came out. My denseness got the best of me for I had never realized until he pointed it out then that Magic Mountain has the logic of a mind, and Infinite Jest the logic of the archive: and this so prescient as I search my store of memories: all emails, notes, and articles, with their dates of origin and the last time I opened them, made equal in the search.)
I'd hired a man to help us. I overheard them talking about who it would be and whether anyone was available. I am unsure whether they were aware I could hear. The Asian/Italian woman came through as x rang the bell. In high-pitched and equally spirited voice she said she'd get it. A (young) woman, wide, lead us to the conference room and said that Johnny would help us. She left and brought us scissors. After some time, Johnny came, and then left to get tape and a knife. He helped me once before. He has a sour distaste for his menial tasks; he lacks care with tape. It is all probably abstract to him: the illogic of the place extending to why and how he must handle things. I saw they have a utility closet: with buckets and cleaning supplies. The phones have no dust on them.
The conference room has marble walls and drawn window-shades. Large interior windows give view to the warehouse. We sat underneath the windows while Johnny repacked the paintings. We watched him the whole time, and when he was finished, he lead us through the warehouse (which has a temperature-controlled chill to it). Everything, so little touched, is protected by its lack of movement. But it is all in the open, too, work piled upon arbitrary work value piled upon value. They have little curiosity about the things passing through or remaining.
(In the middle of the dinner, a court case came up: Jodi Arias. y said that even though she's surely guilty it was like a witch-hunt and connected this to contemporary society's distaste for the artist: because Jodi was wearing big glasses. y identified with her. I hadn't followed the case so later looked it up [The trial has been a made-for-the-tabloids drama, garnering daily coverage by the cable news networks, with tales of lurid sex, lies and death, nude photos and accounts of a salacious relationship that ended in a bloody killing.]: the current pictures are of a tired brunette, but older pictures show a woman well aware of her physical allure. There is also a class issue here, and how our analyses becomes reflections of ourselves.)