5/26 After our flight across the ocean we got into our Jeeps and drove back to Newburgh, a mild evening with wide open windows, an entire world into which we seamlessly slipped, turning the seven-and-a-half hours in the humming tube of metal and plastic into a distant memory. 

5/25 Seeing the excellent night of sleep I had yesterday – more than 8 hours – for what it was: an emergency catch-up. This night, our last in Gothenburg, I have to make do with 3 hours, even though I could have had 6. It is 4.40 in the morning, I have been pacing around our large open living room floor for quite a while already, wondering about the complexity of life and why I seem to have no access to it. The sun has technically just risen, you can tell either from the app in the upper right corner on the laptop or the orange patches in the clouds. My mind is used to considering this a late morning light, made surreal – and also comforting – by the fact that nobody’s awake in the entire neighborhood.

5/24 I told my daughter I didn’t think I did a very good job telling her what I had been up to. Great conversation with her afterwards, on writing, on favourite authors, and on the problem of evil. My son and I discussed viruses, vaccines, the genetic code and the nature of life.

5/23 When my daughter asked how things had been going in my life, what I had been up to lately, I knew nothing to answer. She asked the question in a mocking tone, as she usually does, but I know the genuine interest that lies in it. Everything I have done over the last months crumbled instantly. I tried to synthesize responses, each of them poorer and more ridiculous than the other.

To my greatest embarrassment, I made a scratch in the rental car. Front bumper, driver side. But not only did I make a scratch in the rental car, but also a much bigger one in the car that I scratched, the car standing next to me in the parking lot. As I got out of my car to examine the situation (because I wasn’t really sure if I had actually touched the other car), the other driver came, did not notice anything on his car (even though it was the driver door that I scratched), got in and drove away. As I examined my front bumper, it became clear that I had actually scratched it. I will have to file an insurance claim, which will be alright, but what I have done to the other car, and to the other driver, will keep haunting me. I should have been active, and said something to him even just on the suspicion that something had happened, even if just to prevent a memory of guilt haunting me from now on.

5/22 Gothenburg. Around Härlanda Tjärn, first run with my daughter where I was heavily breathing and she had no trouble making it through the three-and-a-half miles, which was not the case even a year ago. – She tells me I did well.

I am getting more anxious. The simple packing of things for a weekend across the ocean sends me into panic. Does this come with age? I seem difficult to be around when it happens. J suggests I seek medical help, which I will indeed do.

5/21 Flying to Sweden tonight.

5/20 My son asked, but I do not know when my sleeping troubles started. A random note in my journals from decades ago would help. We now have technology that could instantly find it – semantically, not by pure word search. Alternatively, biologs. But these don’t reach as far back – yet.

5/19 In the city. Counting steps to the fire hydrant I’m parked next to. It’s five steps. Okay, not very large ones.

5/18 Another one of these completely unexpected insights with Chris: I need to know the scales and then play them.

5/17 There should be a time, and it is probably fast approaching, when the difference between optically rendered text (PDF) and fully digitized text (EPUB) is a pure nuance, easily crossed whenever necessary.