No.43: He was working on a thick, lozenge-like panel of wood. At first, the paint went on easily, like whitewash, but gradually became more viscous--like toothpaste, and then like cement. Cloudy shapes kept forming on their own, appearing, sometimes, to billow out towards him like a heavy fog rolling into a harbour. He walked to the back wall of the studio and stood there studying his unstable, unmoored painting. It was then he noticed the skyline of some unknown European city gradually forming behind it.

No. 42: Unsettled. He was very troubled by his latest painting. Despite its unsettled, rather threatening Goya-esque mien, it also seemed mawkish--a mother bird feeding her baby! Still, there was a restlessness to it he liked, a pre-apocalyptic feeling about need, urgency, desperation and succour.

No.41: The Eluard Eagle. He had secured a huge sheet of corrugated cardboard—his favourite material—upon which to paint a profile of French Surrealist poet Paul Eluard, one of the writers he most admired. He came to see, however, that, viewed on its side, his Eluard became a rugged mountain landscape, with the poet’s glittering eye now transformed--appropriately, he thought--into a soaring, swooping eagle.

No. 40: BEYOND THE HORIZON. When he wasn't making art, he read. During the past month he had become enthralled by the long, tragic plays of Eugene O'Neill. At one point he was even tempted to frame a photograph which was signed "From Eugene O'Neill, with love"--even though he had written the inscription himself. Tennessee Williams had done that. He had written "To Tennessee, with love from Eugene O'Neill" on a playbiil, long after O'Neill had died---and had framed it.