Sitting at a table in Rockefeller Center, near the in-dismantlement skating rink. I guess the pope is going to stop by at St. Patrick's Cathedral across the street, or maybe the throngs of media gathered there chose the spot just because it's St. Patrick's. The irony is that the pope is passing me by and I'm on my way to a bar. A three-level Irish bar. I'm not sure why that's ironic, because I've never quite understood the meaning of that word, but its use is rarely questioned.

A strange thing has been going on with one of the tires on my car. A few months ago the cap disappeared from my rear passenger side tire. No big deal, though I was slightly puzzled by how it could have popped off without the rest of the tire being compromised.

Well, I noticed a couple of days ago that the cap on that tire is back. Someone appears to have "borrowed" it and returned it to my tire sometime in the last couple of weeks.

An odd prank, probably harmless -- unless GPS-enabled explosives were placed inside my tire, programmed to explode as I drive near the Indian point nuclear power plant.

Maybe in a week the borrower will mail me a pack of photographs showing the tire cap on a journey around the world. There's my tire cap at the Grand Canyon, there it is at the Eiffel Tower, and there it is at the Taj Mahal.

Maybe the pope did it.

....

I checked my 181 today looking for the books (mostly poetry) I ordered last week. Only two books are here. Complete Wallace Stevens poems and "Lithium for Medea," by Kate Braverman.