"Birdsnests is birdsnests."

(449.26-451.27)  Today's reading is another in a series of readings in which I've found myself ending mid-paragraph.  Perhaps as a testament to Shaun's penchant for being long-winded, much of this chapter seems to consist of multi-page paragraphs, so it's become increasingly difficult for me to break the readings into two-page segments.  I broke off today's reading, for instance, three-quarters of the way down page 451.  The paragraph I'm in the middle of ends seven lines into page 452, but I've decided to cut it off rather than go the extra half-page or so tonight.  It might be dumb, but for the time being I'm trying to keep it as close to two pages per day as possible, or else I risk getting confused with where I'm supposed to read to or burned out.

Anyway, although Shaun said at the end of yesterday's reading that it was too late to stay since it was two o'clock in the morning, today's reading begins with him picking back up with the idea of him remaining home and living as a bird in a bush.  Shaun imagines that he could sit there safely, "laughing lazy at the sheep's lightning and turn a widamost ear dreamily to the drumming of snipers" until he watched the moon roll itself to sleep amid the clouds.  He then imagines himself as a fish, eager to "melt my belt for a dace feast of grannom with the finny ones," and "flashing down the swansway, leaps ahead of the swift MacEels, the big Gillaroo redfellows and the pursewinded carpers."  When seeking time alone, he'd recline by the river and alternately play a pipe, smoke a pipe, fish, and teach the "twittynice Dorian blackbudds" (the 29 girls) how to sing.

"But enough of greenwood's gossip," says Shaun, collecting himself.  "Birdsnests is birdsnests."  He now pictures himself amassing great wealth, sinking "every dolly farting" into investments and asserting that "I'm the gogetter that'd make it pay like cash registers as sure as there's a pot on a pole."  After all, he says that "mony makes multimony like the brogues and the kishes."  This great wealth would help Shaun to fully win over Isabel:  "And before you knew where you weren't, I stake my ignitial's divy, cash-and-cash-can-again, I'd be staggering humanity and loyally rolling you over, my sow-white sponse."  He would spoil Isabel altogether, he says, and he concludes today's reading by adding, "There'd be no standing me, I tell you."