June 12. Painted J’s bedroom, naked, under her supervision.

June 11. J. has booked a dumpster again. We throw away large numbers of books. This time we are actually throwing them away for the first time, not taking them to the bookstore thirty miles from here. We are also throwing them away by putting them in a cardboard box, then emptying the box in the dumpster, and carrying the box back upstairs to fill it with the next set of books. – From Germany, someone writes that they are releasing their new fantasy novel in a particularly large format (on Amazon, self-publishing) as a counter-movement to the eBook.

June 10. In Antarctica, particles of microplastics have been found in freshly fallen snow for the first time. I find the thought less alarming than consequential.

June 9. Harrowing week. That was close.

June 8.

June 7.

June 6. Test runs of the talk before the conference. In the evening tech check at the Javits Center. I was not prepared to encounter dozens of people in the conference halls whom I have not seen for years. They greet me enthusiastically. It takes me maybe a second not to want to sneak away and play joy as I frantically search my memory for the names. - Later dinner a few blocks north in Hell’s Kitchen. None of the people I see there I can imagine on the Upper West Side. Hell’s Kitchen is a strange wasteland where people seem to live somehow at random.

June 5. Evening sun, intervals. Sad. I do a lot, but everything seems meaningless. It fills life with contingencies. I expect more from myself.

June 4. Although I think about climate crisis, cancel culture and international conflicts all the time, I don’t see why I should say anything about those things when all the arguments have already been made.

We play a jazz standard together. I’m simultaneously terrified at how clumsy I am even with the mere chords, and enthusiastic because I can see exactly what I need to learn now.

June 3. For my birthday, I am particularly celebrated for a whole weekend. Yet we are not doing anything different than usual, we celebrate every weekend. It’s not at all clear to me what celebrating actually is, aside from the fact that I was never around at the time when people “celebrated” parties all the time.

The chains of thought my brain spins together to remember even a single staff line, and how it then actually recalls those chains of thought within a few tenths of a second so I can play that note. The change from bass clef to treble clef, or vice versa, is so insidious, not to say brutal, that the whole coordinate system falls flat on its face.