August 4, New Jersey. Felt so lost in this day that it almost took my breath away. We had a normal work day at first between living room and bedroom and kitchen. For me, team meetings, a one-on-one, for J, an interview. This house, which is an elongated rectangle of wood into which the rooms are inserted a little too obviously (though I grew up in such a rectangle myself, it never seemed so obviously rectangular to me). When our meetings were over in the afternoon, we wanted to go out for something to eat, we went to a burger place on the Atlantic for that, but the sky was gray overcast, fine sprinkling rain, and unless you find one of the few public walkways over the dunes, you can’t see anything of the ocean. It’s like it’s not there, even though it’s just behind the row of beachfront properties we’re driving along. I would love to live on the beach, but the idea of living almost on the beach seems bizarre. – When we got back, I didn’t know what to do with myself for an hour or two, even the wide wooden blinds in our cute beach house are better left unopened, because the windows just kind of go into the neighborhood. No one here likes their house to be peeked into, and vice versa. It’s only in the evening that I find myself again: playing a few lessons on the portable piano I brought with me, reading and not being able to calm down about the content, writing this. Oh yes: there are books here in the cute beach house, they all come from the same publisher and are the same size, with the same cover design, all novels.