January 8. We arrive at Dagon, which is packed to the brim, and ask for a table for two. We do not have a reservation. We realize at this moment that we are guests who do not need a reservation.

January 7. Video games: structure and graphical embellishment.

January 6. First tempo run this year. Can’t believe how far I’ve fallen behind. Also worried I might be in a rapid cognitive decline and everyone but me is aware of it.

January 5, Writing Group. Enthusiastic.

January 4. Tonight I had one of those musical insights again, which, when you write it down, sounds harmless, even so that you can’t possibly not have it, but it still took me decades to get there: that you can play scales over chords. I’ve always played a bass on the left and chords on the right, and suspected that I should do more on the left, and make the chords on the right more complex. But the idea of moving the harmonic and rhythmic foundation entirely into the left hand, and thinking in scales on the right, scales that can be in the most diverse relationships to the foundation, has not occurred to me until today.

January 3. Somebody does not want to be in the same book as someone who has a different opinion. So he withdraws his collaboration on the book. And all but a very few agree with him that he should get out of it. I feel very old, or somehow wrong-headed, when I no longer understand the world to this extent. – Everyone has to draw his own line, says M. – That’s right. I just want to note that (a) I seem to be very far on the extreme of this spectrum, so from my point of view almost everyone is on the other side, and that (b) I assumed that the most natural basic consensus in society is not only to put up with other opinions, but to actively defend them. This is quite obviously not so, but it may explain my perplexity.

January 2. I must come to terms with the fact that J reads ten times faster than I do. All right, let’s say five times. It’s not like I make up for it in any other way, either – that I read more thoroughly than she does, for example. The only thing a person – any person – can invoke is to be irreducible.

January 1. Back in New York. The bathing suits, which we packed wet in a plastic bag, smell like swimming pool.

December 31. We sometimes find a grasshopper, a gecko or a spider on the wall, which we then carefully transport outside – not always successfully. The thought that these individuals, sitting on the wall so clearly visibly, are the only ones here in the house is questionable.

Saw the largest of all iguanas in the garden again this morning. We had named her Izzy, and had only seen her – until today – on the very first day. I was more and more inclined to assume that Izzy had only seemed so big to us because she was the first iguana and our shock had exaggerated the size. But today she was back, big as a dog, chasing another iguana across the lawn.

Check point: As long as everything I do makes me feel like I’m doing things that are impossibly beyond my abilities, I’m still halfway alive.

December 30. Been diving again. This time, because of difficulties with the health questionnaire, only snorkeling. But to make up for that, we were at Steps Beach, right in the center of the protected coral reef, and the visibility was much clearer. Large schools of blue surgeonfish. They care little for our presence. I found it remarkable how the undercurrent of the surf keeps moving the fish jerkily back and forth by many inches. And also: how the coral floor turns out to be a blanket stretched about a meter above the actual seafloor, with gaps through which you can peek into this hollow space.