Today: up to UC, walking past the G7 flags, the British one and Italian one next to each other; remember the summit in '88 and wonder idly if that year will always be around me in one way or another, just always managing to be there, subtly but certainly. I'm out in my red dress as it's hot, and that marks me as a tourist in this town of sober white, black, beige and navy. At UC it's graduation time, so black heels and black mortarboards abound as I make my way to the Book Room. The woman who gives me her New Yorkers is there and is delighted to hear I am going to London to see (as she puts it) my "special friend." I look for an A-Z but nothing doing; go to the Basement of Mystery and am immediately greeted and then sent out on an errand to Robarts to find the Bibliomania banner, only I get the assistant instead and she knows nothing. Back to the books, where I find an A-Z from...1988 and get it for free. Two students take 16 boxes in to the hot workroom and I unpack and sort my books alphabetically for hours. I have to consciously stop to have juice or unbend my back, and even now my feet hurt. I manage to repack the books decently enough and a student moves the boxes back for me. I will have another 16 boxes by the time I go back, maybe more, but it's nice to just see what we have (nothing terribly special, so far, but the year is young) and get it organized. Others were also working on French and Hebrew books but I was so busy I had no time to talk with them, until I was packing.

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Well, I am over my feelings of stupidity, and wary that feelings of inferiority will flood in, naturally, to take their place. Yes, I have to tell myself, I am good enough to present at Oxford; get that idea, write it down, and forget the audience. Continue to read good writing in the hopes it will rub off. The dust of centuries doesn't bother me, but the real people there will, people who have ploughed the way before me, ploughed it so much there's hardly anything left, in cases; so I have to go elsewhere for raw inspiration and materials. If I am not too hard on myself, this should be possible, if not inevitable; remember, I tell myself, in 1988 you knew nothing and walked on to a battlefield, and now the armies have retreated and you can walk as you please. Or so I think.