January 28. Stuttgart philosophers’ circle, time travel. I find it surprising that time travel is logically impossible, and yet we can think about it. It seems as if it is – unlike things we can’t even think about – almost possible, so to speak.

January 27. Big presentation in the team meeting, for which I literally prepared most in the hours leading up to it, after a night of bad sleep. Went swimming, 800 yards.

January 26. Just stood up and left in the writing group. I felt I had no other option, but I should at least have said I’m not feeling well. Need to get better at this.

January 25. Painting in the concert hall at Woodstock: water falling over a weir, seen from a distance. At the point where the water curves over the edge of the weir, it reflects the midday sun. The acrylic paints create an effect in this area that makes it look whiter than white, glistening. It is reminiscent of starlight, and I wonder on what other occasions one reality enters into another like this. Perhaps all the time.

January 24. That time during running when you can’t imagine giving it your all. In which it seems excessive to bring it on yourself now of all times. At other times you give everything, but not today. And how this time turns into the end of the run, in which you give everything as a matter of course.

Tomorrow it is supposed to snow for the first time this winter in New York, and if it doesn’t happen tomorrow either, that could break a record that goes back to the winter of 1972/73.

January 23. Practiced a blues riff for a long time. Calculated the spacing of triplets and related it to the swing factor, programmed it all in Ableton. I have many limits in music, but playing with too little emotion is not one of them. It’ll be fine.

January 22. Went swimming again in the morning. I find the trip to the gym monstrous. We have to go across town, onto the interstate and then onto the highway. And it takes eight minutes. Unthinkable that there could be a swimming pool in Manhattan that is only eight minutes away.

January 21. What percentage of people would say their parents did an adequate job? J believes – and she has talked to many more people about this than I have – that seventy percent accuse their parents of failure.

Concert in Woodstock. I am very perplexed that the work of the conductor – whether he is passionate or lukewarm – should be able to fundamentally change the character of a piece, but tonight it seemed so. Overture Magic Flute, Open The Door by Gwyneth Walker, Overture Hebrides, Beethoven 7.

January 20. Morning swim at J.’s Gym in Newburgh. The lane is 25 yards long. That’s nine-tenths of the lanes I spent my childhood in. Osu! in the evening. I train with K-Pop.

January 19. Knowing another language doubles your intellectual real estate, says Jen, and that’s a great way of putting it, also a particularly American way.