May 13. Overslept the sunrise, ran one-point-eight miles on the beach, slightly hung over.
Steven Pinker: The romantic Green movement sees the human capture of energy not as a way of resisting entropy and enhancing human flourishing, but rather as a heinous crime against nature […] which will exact a dreadful justice […]. – The adjectives would not have been necessary. That he uses them sounds unfinished.
May 12, Jacksonville. We weren’t here a year ago, we were at the Grand Canyon, but three weeks later we were here. We sit in the sound of waves on the balcony, in the glow of the desk lamp that stands on the concrete floor, because we know there is no light on these balconies and we don’t need to search for it. Fifth floor. I can’t rest until I identify the stars. I know where clouds are because stars that should be there are missing. The brightest lights are those of the container ships on the horizon.
May 11. Flight to Florida. We want to leave three hours before departure, assuming that we will fly from La Guardia. At three hours and fifteen minutes, I see I made a mistake: It’s JFK. There is unusually heavy traffic on the Grand Central Parkway, but our buffer leaves the usual room for one and a half errors.
May 10. Getting up in the morning in Gothenburg and in the evening, on the Upper West Side, after a day that was six hours longer than usual, a day over Labrador and Newfoundland, having dinner in a restaurant is something I am starting to get used to, but not yet my body, which is rebelling.
May 9. Back to New York. Decided not to take the kids to school in the morning because my flight left twenty minutes earlier than usual. Turns out the kids were both sick this morning anyway. Turns out I also really needed the twenty minutes.
May 8. No sleep since three in the morning. At least I managed to stay awake all day. In the Night Thoughts it was there clearly before me: the accusations, the questions I have to ask myself. It all boils down to a question of guilt, as it did with covid. How can this be resolved? Is it even possible?
May 7. A half-hour swimming lesson, for which we travel one hour back and forth through the city. Swimming a similar muscle memory as playing the piano – it seems outrageously difficult, impossible actually, until suddenly it becomes just as outrageously easy.
Daughter, meanwhile, was at the fairground, firing up her passion for roller coasters. Later, she explains everything to me expertly.
I have feel endlessly guilty when I just let the kids do something on their own. This although I can’t do anything different anyway, and I didn’t want – and get – anything else from my parents.
May 6, Gothenburg. Surprised that it got dark during the flight, but it’s also a month and a half until summer solstice. My eyes are burning from lack of sleep. Surprised how the kids are happy to see me – my son, at least, runs fifty yards toward me. At dinner, my daughter starts imitating me (“Hm.”), then I’m supposed to imitate her, then my son. Before bedtime, we go shopping together.
Is it possible to admire a time while living in it as if you had just lost it?
May 5. Sweden tonight. I’m not bringing anything spectacular for the kids. Not because I think it’s bad to bring them something spectacular, but because I don’t have or am or can think of anything spectacular.