Out to the track again on Tony the distributor’s second tip. Poor information, a crooked jockey, an inept stable source contributed to the disaster on the first, but this time the word is that things are straight and that amends are made. Out in the subway special this time, I look at the people with interest; they stare, quivering, at tipsheets and the Morning Telegraph, occasionally mumbling “bastards” to themselves. Once I took this kind of hatred for granted, but now I see it as unique and motivated; I am beginning to see their point. Life examined from their point of view is eliciting some very sane responses. At the track I go directly to the windows, make the bet on the first race and walk to the rail, a sense of purposefulness overcoming me. No waste this time around. People make way for me, smoking cigars, picking their noses, examining the lights on the tote under the shade of hands. The horses break from the gate and the tip wins by seven lengths, galloping, in near track-record time, paying $21.40. I collect Tony’s $2,140 and then go to the $5 show window to collect my own winnings of $14. I feel that I have learned something although I am not sure exactly what. Tony’s two thousand will apply to his long-standing debt to us so that part of it is all right. No, it is something else I have learned, something that is either subverbal or beyond the poor artifices of words. It has to do with the question of timing, and if timing is merely another word for mortality, then I have learned almost all of it, although it will almost certainly take me several years to get it straightened out in mind and codified to a set of principles which will do me any good at all.