May 23. Conjecture: Stock prices will continue to rise, by and large, as long as we still need money.
If I understood her correctly, J says that only when you are convinced that the world is ending will you do something about it – the only thing that matters even in the face of the end of the world.
May 22. Barbecued in the backyard. Moved the chairs and bench around concentrically every quarter hour to avoid direct sun. As a thunderstorm approached, set up the canopy, secured it roughly with two ropes to prevent it from being carried away by a gust. J gets – after one failed attempt – better at reaching the necessary heat with the charcoal grill. She also has a new armchair made of black tubular steel, in which one can lean back all the way to the horizontal and set the desired angle with two screw handles. When N tries to carry the bench – also made of black tubular steel, but already from last year – overhead to the other side, large amounts of rusty water run out. It scatters in a large arc on the stone tiles, between which the moss is already springing up again, and which we swept in a makeshift manner before the barbecue. We pour some clear water on the rust puddles so that the orange-brown water is rinsed into the cracks between the tiles, because if it remains on the tiles, the stains will not dissolve even during rain showers. The dog that G brought with her roams the garden with awkward curiosity and, when he gets to the part of the board fence under which he would fit, always has to be stopped and brought back with great haste. I enjoy the barbecue and J’s good food, including currywurst, more than the conversation, which remains inert for long stretches.
May 21, Newburgh. I wonder why the New York Times is reporting a million covid deaths, dramatically presented with last text messages from people ripped right from the middle of their lives. I find the question unexpectedly complex. You don’t think about the thousands of people who die from heart attacks every day, many just as unexpectedly, but candles are lit for ten people killed in a terrorist attack. There seems to be something wrong, scandalous, about the one million covid deaths. It is said that many of them were unnecessary, could have been avoided. What exactly does that mean? They would still be alive if covid hadn’t existed? They would still be alive if people weren’t so stupid and everybody got vaccinated? Or: They would still be alive if people didn’t knowingly do wrong, if politicians imposed stricter lockdowns and people wore masks more consistently? So the dead are a scandal because there are people to blame for their deaths?
May 20. Kathryn Schulz about her father, his life, his character, her love for him, his death. As a father, you are usually not loved like that by your children. I, for one, don’t love my father that way. The question is how much of that is due to inadequacies or fault of the father, and how much is due to inadequacies or fault of the children.
May 19. That moment in which you’re convinced you shouldn’t apologize for anything, and that moment in which you want to apologize for everything. Getting from one to the other as quickly as possible.
May 18. Briefly considered going to Brooklyn for an author’s reading to justify my presence in this city a bit more. But no. I can’t make the time for the tiny reward such a reading would offer beyond the content of the book. The reading evenings in Berlin challenged me, questioned me to the core. Here, now, I don’t expect that. I have other things to do.
May 17. Back to New York. The city seems decapitated to me. Hotels – all over the country – are as full as they were before the pandemic, but the subway in Manhattan has only forty percent ridership. The world of work – the privileged world of work – seems to have changed irrevocably. Midtown and the Financial District are empty shells. Millions of jobs, millions of livelihoods continue to function just as before: schools, hospitals, restaurants. But what happened in the office towers of Manhattan, in the skyline, is missing. What is to become of this city is as unclear as it was when Berlin was walled in.
May 16. We hold hands as we fall asleep, caressing each other, a slight bending of a finger, a gentle squeeze. Eventually it turns into sleep twitches, more forceful, uncontrolled. A hand that can move, press and caress, something temporary.
May 15. In the morning one of the many beach weddings. This one features a door draped in white fabric aimed at the point of sunrise, it is being set up in the dark by the glow of LED lights. There are no guests. Just before sunrise, a violinist begins to play, three cameras record: one mounted on a long black arm, one carried freehand, and a drone. The bride and groom come down the dune steps at six thirty-three, two minutes after astronomical sunrise, but with a bank of clouds over the horizon, even that is too early. The sun will need another three to five minutes to rise, while the pastor has begun to speak with his book open. And it would be good if no one crossed through the one hundred meters of beach between the draped door and the edges of the waves. Most people on the beach grasp that and make a detour, but not all. Where the sun finally rises, another formation rises up above the cloud bank, it looks like an atomic mushroom, and the entire ceremony takes place before the backdrop of this atomic mushroom, effectfully illuminated by the sun.
May 14. Drove one hour to the middle of Florida, 1 black frog, 1 snake, 1 owl, lots of mosquitoes as big as a fingernail. Got stuck with the jeep and got free again.