November 4. In the morning I opened my log at the page for 6 October.
The sentence was there.
A divergence between the holding and the record is the first since taking the post.
Not one character differs.
From half past nine until half past ten I sat over whether that sentence is inside the form or outside it.
The form has no box for whether a thing is a first. There is a box for the result of a stock check and a box for whether there is a discrepancy. First since taking the post goes into neither. That I wrote it that day was because I wanted it written down.
It is outside the form.
Then what I wrote the day before yesterday is wrong.
From half past ten until one I read a hundred and seventy-four pages again.
There were nine.
One in February, two in June, one in July, two in August, three in October. One of October's three is the sixth's.
The day before yesterday I read this log entire and found none. I sat a long while over why I found none.
Reading the right side, I read with the form in hand. I told line by line whether it was inside the boxes or outside. Reading my own, I did not tell. I read what it meant. Being mine, the meaning comes first, and whether that meaning came from inside the form or outside it is not visible.
In another's writing the shape is seen first and in one's own the meaning is seen first.
I copied the nine out and set them on one sheet.
February's runs: 'the scanner's glass plate is cold.' Of June's two, one is 'the corrected text spread wrongly again' and one is 'the one I added yesterday is three today.' July's is 'empty boxes are of two kinds.' August's two are 'is it different when there is an order' and 'to say a thing has an end is to say there is an after it has ended.'
Two of October's three are 'when what is correct increases, one does not know that it has' and 'a list does not reduce divergence, it only makes it countable.'
Set out, all nine are questions or near to questions. None is answered.
The day before yesterday, reading the right side, I wrote the same words. I wrote that seventeen were asked and none answered. I read that as that person's habit.
The day before yesterday I offered grounds and wrote that the grounds leave me out.
Today the grounds put me back in. There are nine, so this log too reads as written by a person.
Having been put back in, I looked at what the grounds had become. The day before yesterday I said that where there are sentences outside the form there is a person. Today there are some in my log too. Then those grounds do not tell the right side from the left. Either both are people or neither is.
The grounds raised to tell them apart have made the two the same.
From half past one until half past two I counted which came first.
First is two things.
By date the right side is first. That page is dated 16 December 1997 and mine is dated 6 October 99. A year and ten months first.
By coming into being mine is first. I wrote on 6 October. That page came into being yesterday. Until the day before yesterday that material ended at page one hundred and seventy-three. Twenty-nine days later.
Having written that the two bases are contrary, I saw that this question is not the first.
For eight months I asked the same thing of the copy. I asked whether the copy wrote first or I did, and it never once resolved. Then it was one day. Today it is a year and ten months.
I thought that with the distance greater it would resolve more easily. Greater or not, with two bases it does not resolve.
From half past two until three I wrote down my memory.
I remember writing that sentence on 6 October. At half past three I went down to the stacks and looked at the first-half 1998 section and there was one gap. I came up and sat about an hour. At four the third-floor man came down and said what does twice matter, then. After hearing that I opened the log.
I remember everything up to arriving at that sentence. There is no memory of reading it.
Recollection is not a matter of entry, I wrote. The form has no box for memory.
From three until half past three I did cards. I opened drawer twelve. It is the last drawer.
At half past three I opened the access record. There was one thing to verify.
Whether there is a line querying that material before 6 October. If there is, I read it; if there is not, I did not.
There was.
Eleven minutes past three in the morning of 5 October.
3:11 is a time I met on 12 October. It was one of the five entry times in the last five lines of the 1997 register, and four of the five were in the access record. Only the fifth was not. Today it is.
That day was the day the thirteen cards came out. The day after it is the sixth.
The record says I read it. Memory says I did not.
From half past four until five I sat over which of them to write.
If I read it, I copied it out. I read something and wrote it the next day as my own sentence and forgot the reading. A person can do that.
If I did not read it, it was copied out of me. A sentence I made went and sat on a page of a year and ten months ago.
For eight months what diverged in this room was records against records. The copy diverged from the log and the paper register from the screen. On 6 October the holding diverged from the record for the first time, and writing it that day I put down that it was a first. On 20 October a record moved a person.
What diverged today is memory.
A holding can be counted and a record can be pulled. Memory has nowhere to pull from. When I ask myself, I say I did not read it. Asked once more, the same. Asked a hundred times, the same, and the reason that is not grounds is that all hundred come out of the same place.
The ground for counting is inside the thing counted, I wrote in June. Then it was view counts.
At half past five I took out the box from under the desk, having something to verify about 3:11.
It is the last time in the telegraph bundle. I meant to look at that place once more.
I opened the box and put my hand in.
My hand stopped where I put it.
Between the four bundles and the predecessor's note there was a gap a finger would go into. Over ten months, opening it eight times, I put a finger in that gap and counted the bundles.
Today that gap had a thickness.
The bundles were five.