August 11. This is new: I myself certainly take my smartphone out of my pocket after no more than three seconds of inactivity and go about reading something stupid somewhere, but there are now more and more twenty-year-olds who are consistently so absorbed by chats that they can only move slowly and with delay. New York elevators are laboratories for such effects because no one in this city wants to lose a second unnecessarily anywhere. These new twentysomethings are hard to endure.

August 10. I lie awake from three o'clock, every night, reliably. Last night I found an improvisation site that looks promising. However, it is supposed to be crucial to sing the notes. Therein lies a problem, because I can’t sing.

Could I possibly learn to? I used to be at a loss when faced with this question. I was at the mercy of whatever random person happened to be around and gave their version of the answer. Today, I can find the sum of the entire world’s knowledge of it online. The ambiguity remains remarkably the same. If I were completely amusical, I wouldn’t be able to remember any pieces of music altogether. On the other hand, I find it really hard to hit a given note. I also don’t know if I am too high or too low. Such a brain structure with partial weaknesses and failures is completely within the realm of possibility. Science would simply raise its eyebrows and say: uh-huh. And what I can do about it, which parts of it are malleable and which are not, I can only find out by myself.

August 9. After quite some time, we argued about something again, but we really need to stop doing that, it’s a pure waste of time because after two hours, everything is fine again as always.

August 8. Went running at 92 degrees and demanded everything from my body which could be demanded in the heat. The watch corrects its estimate of my maximum heart rate.

August 7. Went running in the hour before sunrise, when the heat and humidity were still just about bearable. As I return, my daughter writes to me and states emphatically – unexpectedly – that she wants to spend time alone with me. I’m unsure whether to say that I just ran past the spot on the Hudson where we used to go with our bikes and sit on the rocks together. Will she be able to stand such a painful memory – or is it painful for her at all? I write it, and she writes “good memories” with a laughing emoji.

August 6. The question of what I am doing here, in New York, in America, gnaws often now. The children are no longer here; what was once a family is less than a ruin. I like the country, I like the people here, even if I haven’t made any friends in ten years and don’t plan to make any. The woman I love is here, but would rather be somewhere else. Compared to my life here, my life in Germany was richly endowed with activities, with friends. And yet, for the life of me, I don’t want to go back to Germany or Europe. I would suffocate.

August 5. The good thing about sports bars is that you can always look at one of the screens and make it look as if you knew a lot about it and were passionately interested in it. In a sports bar, any pathetic life appears as if it contained something.

August 4, Chicago. Depressed, unclear why. Threw away everything I wrote the last few days, hence the sparse entries.

August 3, Chicago.

August 2, flight to Chicago.