Saved by the notebook⁵

Today I came out of the house carrying a notebook and a tape recorder, because I had decided I would do hill work in Westchester and dictate some poems in the car on the way there. As soon as I came out of the house, I dropped the notebook — not the tape recorder, luckily. So I bent down with difficulty, because of my back pain, to pick it up.

My notebook had fallen on my left foot. When I looked down I saw that my right foot was dark but my left foot was so white. I said, “How can it be?” On my right foot I had no sock. So I had to go inside and make the right foot white. I always get blisters if I don’t use socks. So the notebook saved me. Otherwise, perhaps when I started running I would have been in another world and I would have gotten blisters.