Gertrude Stein and Alice B Toklas

24 November: woke up from a dream about poodles that were the size of thumbs, brown ones.

Read some Gertie Stein this am. Read the food section. "The change the dirt, not to change dirt means that there is no beefsteak and not to have that is no obstruction, it is so easy to exchange meaning, it is so easy to see the difference." (Roastbeef, Food, Tender Buttons)

Gertie really uses writing as form, content, and context, she explains what she does in a way in her piece compositon as explanation. She asserts she is beginning agian and again. In Composition as Explanation, Stein expresses the cycling of everything, implying that appearances are unreliable, andthat which is most reliable is change.

We generate meaning by our acceptance or refusal, she asserts, of our experience of something, which is sublimated by our assumptions. Gertie uses our assumptions of writing and reading to her advantage, and we slip and slide around in her slathery verbal meanderings. She really enjoys walking the dog, Batch II. The outlaw she writes of is herself, and we could be outlaws too, if we let go of what is rigidly accepted and adhered to, to locate a new experience of something, and one which might be fascinating, enthralling, liberating, wonderful.

Gertie's inversions turn writing on its head, she makes it into a meal or a passionate kiss.