August 31. To the Adirondacks tomorrow (until Tuesday).

August 30. I was not sure if I would still run. Actually, only the lure of incipient rain could get me to do it. But the forecast was changing every few minutes, moving the thunderstorms further and further into the late evening. The clouds that were building over New Jersey looked convincingly like thunderstorms, and it was also getting dark earlier because of them. By the time it was dark, however, they were lit from below by the city, and it was not at all clear how much chance of rain there was in them. On the last third of my route, from Pier I back to Ninety-first, the wind blew a few drops at me from behind.

August 29. How did this insecurity make it into me? What about the careful listening, the always conceded possibility that the other might be right? How does this turn into this disgusting insecurity?

August 28. Back in Manhattan. Heat on the subway, urine. Reminded myself of my piano by playing it. Satisfied with the different characters of the instruments, I want both. – When I decide on something as quickly as I’ve decided on this new piano now, I read articles about it and watch videos for days afterwards to back up my decision. Picking apart the sounds of instruments is as nerdy as it is tedious. Music as showing off. I don’t want to be able to play in a way that keeps the audience from getting bored, but in a way so that sounds that wouldn’t exist without me are getting created.

August 27. Toyed with the idea of buying a stage piano that would be suitable for gigs, and to have an instrument here in Newburgh. Drove to a music store out of sheer curiosity and came out with a piano. Played all evening. Very confused about the different feel of the keys and the different sound. Never thought familiarity with an instrument could reach such proportions. It’s like sleeping with a different woman.

August 26. J thinks I am a polymath, which I find honorable, and simultaneously so unjustified as to be comical. But it wets my appetite to engage with the most remote, surprising subjects, simply because I have met people who have so much world in them, and I have such a hunger for world myself.

August 25. I don’t know how to find my balance. J thinks I’m black-and-white. Unable to see nuances, unable to bear even the slightest criticism.

August 24. Truly no shortage of difficult, exhausting situations. Depleting sleep, and the number of beats per minute with which I can play my exercises decreases.

August 23. Among lovers, not accepting the other’s tone is a valid argument, all by itself.

Tension and my tortured running up and down, my inaccessibility, my snapping. My tortured face and my dogged anger are my father’s. How I hate that. It just can’t be that I am even the least bit like him.

August 22.