6/15 I’m learning so slowly, I can’t imagine this is a reasonable speed, but so I’m told. Which, more importantly, means I shouldn’t always look for ways to make it faster. This is about as fast as it gets.

6/14 Sign draft: HAPPY 250th, AMERICA! GET WELL SOON!

6/13 Graduation concert at the music school in New Brunswick. The muteness of musical achievements: an astounding child, a hard work.

6/12 Videos from Sweden, graduation ceremony. My son as an emcee with the top hat he got for our wedding. My daughter plays Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls: I want you to know who I am. My eyes may have gotten a little wet. I try to comp the song on the piano, restrained, like Chick Corea said: play to make the other instruments sound good.

6/11 Drove into Manhattan on this warm summer evening, could smell the trash on the George Washington already. In the streets, a few minutes later, a whole lot more: food that smelt too burnt for barbeque, more like an exhausted kitchen, or the sum total of all exhausted kitchens. My alleys of light on the river.

6/10 Reading Stanislaw Lem and it’s like being reminded of the complexity of the world.

6/9 That there are quiet mornings around here. I get up before six, after having been awake since about three, and there’s no-one around, the streets are well-lit by the early morning light, but mine are the only eyes that see them. This is an experience that doesn’t exist in Manhattan. I am still as intrigued by it as I was as a boy. Although I need to remind myself of it.

6/8 An administration can collapse from one moment to the next, and then it seems incredible that it ever had something resembling power. Even in 1988 I was certain that the Eastern Bloc would last a thousand years, it was the most definitive border in the world. And then, over night, it turned into a harmless wasteland lined by shabby slabs of concrete.

6/7 Tarkovsky, Stalker. J’s music had reminded me of it, and I really wanted to watch it with her, but it turned out I had only the faintest memories of it, and we were both very surprised, or captivated by something entirely unexpected. I was about to fall asleep when we started, and it held my attention for the full two and a half hours.

6/6 How can you live a meaningful life without spending all Saturday getting everything halfway back in order? Are there people who can live on a somewhat constant entropy level?