7 July 2004. My telephone went dead on this date, so I couldn't make my blog entry. I don't know what happened, but I called the telephone company and had a repairman assigned to me. He was scheduled to show up sometime today, 8 July. By chance, I happened to pick up the phone this morning, though, and--yow--its dial tone was back. So I cancelled the repair visit (which would have cost me at least $75, which I really can't afford).

That brings me to the entry I was going to make. It's a ridiculously short and trivial one, but--well, here it is: when I finished filling out my answers to Betsy Franco's questionnaire about poetry work habits the other day, I thought of another question for it: why do you write poetry? But I've answered that in my book--and possibly here, too, by quoting what I wrote in the book. I was thinking of something else, though, something very simply but that I've never spelled out to myself. It's about pleasure. The short answer to why I do anything is to gain pleasure (or avoid pain). But many things I do even though I'm not sure I'll enjoy them. I do them because I hope for pleasure. Running, for instance. At some point, I hope to suddenly feel . . . swift!

Thinking about that got me into my pro-puritanism zone where I well up with contempt for those who do just about nothing except things that give them direct pleasure: eating, sex, making your car go real fast, etc. I'm not so unhelathy as not not like those things, but there nothing compared to possible pleasures.