November 23. For a ritual like Thanksgiving we lack all the necessary normalcy. That makes it all the more cute if, rooted in our weirdness, we try to enact something uniform and recurring. Even more than the meticulously prepared meal, Jess is delighted with the dining table that now, after more than two years, finally stands in the middle of the room, with a new teak tray in the middle and candlesticks on it that she bought in an antique store just yesterday. The chairs with the parabolic seat backs are placed around it; everything has an austere but giving character. J. has been making Kartoffelklöße for this day ever since we met, and they are getting closer and closer to the dish of my childhood. The most difficult thing, however, is the discussion about the pronunciation of the word. She often thinks I’m making fun of her, or that I’m suggesting improvements to the vowels that aren’t necessary because she’s already doing it as well as she can. – We are two people who don’t fit in anywhere except with each other.

November 22. To realize that the customer just didn’t think of anything and I have to think of everything for them. Okay, bring it on.

I fire flashes of light at my skin to kill hair roots. The skin reddens a little, a grid of the spots where I held the flash unit. I’m sure that will go away, right? It is not possible to do any lasting damage to the skin, especially not with a few flashes of light. Everything heals again. I am indestructible.

While shopping today, J saw a trans woman here in Newburgh for the first time. She thinks that’s brave in an environment like this, in the countryside. I have no instinct for any such danger. Some of the things I wear in Manhattan don’t fit here. Maybe that’s why I should continue wearing them anyway.

November 21. Spent the day indoors. It’s the week before Thanksgiving, very little is happening at work. Did laundry. My only noteworthy physical activity: Took the stairs to the ninth floor. I can’t help but think of the young firefighter pictured rushing up the World Trade Center stairwell, maybe on the thirtieth or fortieth floor, while an endless line of other people go down in the opposite direction. Memorizing musical scales, can’t explain exactly what for, but hope it will help.

November 20. My son texts. He doesn’t have the mutation. That sets the path for a few centuries.

November 19. First prerequisite: I always have to be able to be productive. I feel crushed if I can’t create something new on a regular basis. A text, a video. Second prerequisite: I must always have the feeling that I can improve. That what I’m doing would almost be good if only I could add this or that. Both prerequisites are constantly under threat.

November 18. Went to the Strand Bookstore with J. It makes me sad to go there, or shall we say: It disturbs me. So much so that ever since we met, J had resigned herself to the fact that she would never go to the Strand with me, even though she likes to do it herself. But I’m not like that at all. Please, we can go to the Strand, I’m up for it, I don’t mind, shall we go today? Yes, yes, don’t worry about it.

It makes me sad to see the words in those paper graves, although here, unlike in Germany, there is much less of that rule: sophistication equals paper. Most of what I see here is also available digitally. Except the treasures, of course. But it disturbs me when I ask myself: Does this temple of books really leave me unmoved? And: Are there really digital equivalents to the way you make discoveries in a bookstore, especially a well-run one? – There are not. And I’m not sure what’s missing. It would be a life’s work to build something equivalent, a task like that of the Strand’s most famous employee, who took care of fiction for thirty years and died in 2021.

November 17. At Cibo e Vino, which, like many restaurants in Manhattan, has had an outdoor pavilion since the pandemic, a man is sitting on the beams of the facade scaffolding smoking weed, swearing and being confrontational. The employees try to get him to leave, but he just swears louder and louder and jeers that they should send for the police already, then he’ll show everyone, etc. But the police in Manhattan have better things to do. And when you extend your restaurant onto the street, you have to expect everything that goes on in the street.

November 16. As I drive the car to the parking garage, I see a van on Broadway, parked in the second row, just briefly, like everywhere else in Manhattan, and above the back door is a yellow running light, two segments that diverge from the center, in one, two, three steps, until they start in the center again, and diverge again, one, two, three steps, and all over again. No one sees this running light. It is completely lost in the abundance of lights on Broadway, even here, on this most boring stretch of Broadway, on the Upper West Side, the Charlottenburg of Manhattan. I want to know how this running light works. It could be made with flip-flops, a shift register, but no, I suspect it’s an entire processor, Turing-complete, that could do anything with the lights, but it’s programmed only for the three-step divergence, and between each of the steps it counts to a hundred million.

November 15. I analyze my irritation with the Asian students in the building. First of all, they are barely twenty and, in accordance with my own age, I feel the usual annoyance at their carelessness. I discover the word brat. J and I regularly joke about the frontal lobes, the executive function which is not yet fully developed at this age. What’s more, their carelessness materializes in their use of their smartphones. Almost all of them almost always hold the display close to their face, are immersed in chats and feeds and let just enough of their surroundings into their peripheral vision to avoid running into walls and door frames. There’s also no denying that this overabundance – there are almost exclusively Asian students in the building – triggers group instincts. Why are there so many of them? Why do they all look different from us? I don’t give anything about those instincts. I always rather wanted to be among strangers than among similars. But I think you have to take that quiet gnawing into account. Its strength differs in different people. It’s one of the forces you have to deal with if you want to bring humanity together.

November 14. I didn’t realize that I frequently get into states of overwhelm, anxiety and panic, in which my family’s wise reaction is to look at each other with a meaningful shrug and roll of the eyes.