April 23. Fire in the fireplace in the garden. Looked into the flames for a couple of hours, being enveloped by the smoke. Later Cards Against Humanity.

April 22, Newburgh. On the other side of the Hudson, halfway up the still bare mountain ridge, we see a complex of buildings that seems to be completely isolated. A giant mansion, perhaps, or a mysterious research facility. We can google it: It is a micro wedding venue.

April 21. Great puzzlement about those who still wear surgical masks now. If they were serious about protecting themselves or others, they would have to wear better masks. So it may just be mere compliance with the rules or habit. Or they are bad at math, or they haven’t read any articles that would have explained it. Those who read only the New York Times from the beginning, for example, never got such information.

April 20. Three hours of cleaning, even if the cleaning actually only consisted of getting things out of the way for the robots. There was time for a little piano practice in between. And doing laundry.

April 19. Ran a large part of the three and a half mile course without feeling my hip joint. This seems like a miracle to me, an undeserved one, and a temporary one.

April 18. Woke up with an unusually strong hangover, expected a quiet day without customers, but immediately got dropped into an emergency escalation that completely overwhelmed me because I was only superficially familiar with most of the components. Annoyed at the last minute rescheduling, scolded, apologized for scolding. In my highly privileged dream job, I have no business complaining about such things. It got better as the day went on, when I was able to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

April 17. One year together.

April 16. Back in Manhattan. Trees blooming not exuberantly, but definitely, and everywhere. Daffodils that J thinks are tulips, we laugh. Slanting rain on an intersection in headlights.

(Morning: sliding open the window to hear sounds of Manhattan. Rumbling subway, beep sequence of a construction vehicle. I suggest: songbirds in cages by the pool on the roof deck of the Westly.)

April 15. Inevitable anxiety at tax time: am I about to give away thousands of dollars that would be mine? Or am I about to commit a crime because I checked a box I didn’t fully understand, illegally saving me thousands of dollars?

April 14, Newburgh. Listened to the morning birds through the open window until the rhythmic honking of a car alarm went off at half past five, not particularly loud, but steady, for an hour. Sometimes it sounded like someone was trying to yank the horn out of the car or muzzle it, but they couldn’t. When the horn finally stopped for good at six-thirty, I was awake enough, and the birds largely silenced.

In the afternoon, as I lay down for an hour, a revival preacher, just quiet enough that you couldn’t understand a word except an occasional djeezes, and just loud enough that you could follow the usual passion. Unclear if someone was blasting the neighborhood with an amplifier from their own backyard, or if there is an actual church around here.