September 4. And we did indeed do it, our astronomical kayak stunt. At eight forty, when twilight was over and the moon would not rise for another hour. Moored the kayak to the shore with a one-hundred-feet hammock harness, got in using a headlamp and carefully paddled the hundred feet out onto the lake. Stars, though a few clouds on the eastern horizon, stars, though the trees on the shore still obscured half the sky. Summer triangle almost vertically above us, Saturn. The kayak so wobbly that we could hardly move. I had the image stabilizing binoculars with me, but even to lift them up to my face would have been too unstable. I just held up the smartphone to identify a few constellations, then we carefully paddled back to shore, where we had set up an insect trap as a beacon light so we’d find the spot.

Back home this morning. Two hours of carrying stuff up the one-hundred-yard footpath to the car. Showered in the more civilized part of the campground, on the other side of the lake. Exchanged the smoky clothes for fresh ones. Four and a half hours back to Newburgh.

The shower at the campground was still awful, compared to the shower at home. The water barely lukewarm, a dirty floor that you’d rather not touch with your feet, so you do a balancing act on your sneakers while drying off, etc. The hygiene technology in the 18th century seems horrible to us today, I would hardly have survived a day there, but that’s only because I know the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Is it possible that our time today will seem just as unbearable two hundred years from now?

September 3. Third morning. First night that was warm enough to have the sleeping bag not fully zipped up and without day clothes on.

Campsite description: We are on the lakeshore, but the trees are so dense all the way to the edge of the shore that even the brightest sunshine nowhere casts more than scattered, moving wisps of light on the forest floor. Correspondingly at night: we can only sometimes see single stars between the treetops, with no chance to identify them because the constellations around them are missing. The view from the edge of the shore out to the lake is wonderful and offers a large area of sky, but on our few nights here the moon is there quite early before midnight, and there are no stars to be seen. If we were to kayak out on the lake at night, even before the moon rises, we should have a good clear sky. But then we’d never find our way back to our campsite. Maybe tonight – our last – we’ll try to moor the kayak to shore with a long line and get out on the lake a few feet after all.

We didn’t realize that you can’t drive to these campsites by car. We had to park about a hundred yards away and then we brought all our luggage down to the lakeshore in endless shuttle walks. The campground has: a wooden platform, about twenty by twenty feet, level, a heavy, wooden picnic table with benches attached, a fire pit that consists of a flat metal cylinder, and a cast iron grill grate that you can swap over the fire. Also: an outhouse.

We strung up the hammocks right by the water. It’s not so easy to get into the lake. The shore edge is about a foot or two high. At good campsites you have a tree, a root, a few stones in the water so that you can get down reasonably safely, and then balance on the stones further into the lake. It is very shallow and not particularly clear, so it doesn’t seem advisable to jump forward, even a very flat jump. You can still stand even a hundred yards out. The bottom and the water are red, remnants from an old iron mine.

September 2. Camping in space.

The first night was much colder than the second - forty-five degrees and now fifty-five. Still, every night is a lesson in not expecting anything from the temperature. I have a much better sleeping bag now than last year, but without a blanket underneath it gets cold in there too. Also: warm underwear and the normal clothes over it.

It takes an hour to make coffee in the morning.

Been swimming again. Big spider on a tree on the shore, stretched out in the morning sun.

Last night in the dark, by the fire, we played a game that had questions in it like: Who has influenced you the most in the last year. This leads to the question of how to define influence. Influence is more than checking out someone or admiring them. Someone, must have made you do something that you otherwise would not have done or would have done differently. In that regard, I’m having a hard time finding any kind of influence in the last year, which is a sign of the drought, the sinkhole I’m in.

I also feel, as usual, desperate. J. and I discuss the difference between desparation and urgency.

Wish for the next year: to finish the essay and start another one.

For the second time, after a year, kayak again, the two of us. It’s about the same as my first time golfing, when I asked what I was doing wrong, and the answer was: Everything! - You have to hold your course like a compass needle, paddle in a steady rhythm, change course just by dipping the paddles differently, and not overcompensate. Upper body relaxed at the same time. Otherwise, many times the effort that would be needed goes into tensing the muscles. Meanwhile, J. practices patience with me.

September 1. Campsite without running water this time, but on the lakeshore. I can jump in right after getting up. It’s two hours after sunrise, the water completely flat and still, plus surface tension insects. We had so many things we wanted to do here. Instead we just sit by the fire, look into the flames and are happy. It’s bratwurst with mustard and whiskey for breakfast.

August 31. Hammocking in the Adirondacks. We arrive with one and a half hour of remaining daylight.

August 30. Adam Neely at the Blue Note yesterday. Yes, one should say Sungazer, but everybody says Adam Neely. Of course it was great. But I’m still having a hard time understanding what concerts are actually for. Well, I mean, I like to go to a concert, I just don’t understand why. Markus says: Because what you see and hear happens at that very moment. – Very good answer, although it doesn’t really explain anything.

August 29. So making music seems to mean: bringing one’s own body into agreement with the musical idea.

August 28. Back to Manhattan. To be noted: We want to get to the state where each of us has so much of our own stuff in both households that we can go back and forth without having to carry any luggage - except maybe a backpack for the computers. Also to be noted: number of seconds it takes me after waking up in the middle of the night to realize which household I am in.

August 27. J. and I drove to Newburgh to pack the car for the camping weekend. Meanwhile, I’ve been banging my head on an algorithmic problem all day. A wall, I find a way around it, am happy for a few minutes, and then another wall. Can’t pull myself away from it all day, like a prisoner of my own brain.

August 26. My manager’s late wedding party in Flatiron. A loft in purple light, the music professionally adjusted to our birth dates, it’s too loud to talk much, but the guests, most of whom don’t know each other, don’t have much to talk about anyway. It was still a wonderful party, the kind of party that you rarely find and that you can’t manufacture artificially.