March 24. Whether my anger is so harmless that one can’t complain about it is not for me to decide.

March 23. Hip joint complains. If I’m careful not to raise my feet too high when running, I’m sure I can reduce the energy it’s subjected to on impact by half or more. What if that’s no longer enough? When will it no longer be enough?

My hands do strange things when playing the notes from the random generator, things I can’t explain.

March 22. On the Hudson, the first cherry trees are beginning to bloom. Inconspicuous splashes of color that in no way foreshadow what lies ahead. From now on, just for that reason alone, increase the training workload so as not to miss anything.

March 21. Back in New York. Day in orbit.

March 20. This apartment is also in ruins. What remains are large portraits of the children on the walls and a children’s book: Mom and Dad are Getting a Divorce. It sits on a shelf in the bedroom with the cover down.

Humans do not raise their offspring together. The men are no good for that. And thanks to the invention of child support, constellations can now be ended without much hassle. You just have to be prepared for the fact that in two-thirds of the cases it will turn out that way, and that is not easy insofar as nature lies to you through its teeth.

My son went to the lake today with his incompetent father, there is no other.

March 19. The women in my life are furious with me, furious with my rampant laziness when it comes to the kids. It may be that I do more with them in one weekend than my father did in his entire life, but it’s too little. Definitely too little. And the kids vote with their feet.

Neither from what my daughter says nor from her behavior can I make any sense. All I can tell is that she is miserable and that this is all too big for her.

If anything, I would have wanted less from my father, not more.

What I would have needed, he could not provide: a meeting on the same cognitive level. When I got that from other people, it was the most intense experience I had ever had.

March 18, Gothenburg. Precious times when things run effortlessly between me and the children. No struggle, no helplessness. But the guilt is breathing down my neck.

March 17. The way I think about the pandemic – the way I’ve been asking myself non-stop for two years what is the correct behavior, whether it is justified to do this or that – all of that is completely incomprehensible to J. I am a continental European, she is an American. She does something that seems plausible to her, and that settles the question. We stand in front of each other quite stunned and mutually cannot comprehend how one can live and think like that.

March 16. In the empty office building in which I am working I find a handwritten note: »I took a diet coke on 3/6/20. Will replace or pay.«

March 15. The Google voice gives navigation instructions, and I puzzle over how J can imitate them so accurately that you can almost hear no difference, and why the tiny difference you do hear is so hilarious. For each announcement, the voice switches to the bluetooth channel from the smartphone to the car. Afterwards, it releases the channel, but apparently it does so without taking into account the bluetooth latency of a few milliseconds. That’s why the last consonant is cut off in the middle, half a p or half a t is missing from each announcement. But it is not lost. It still hangs in the bluetooth buffer, and when the next instruction comes thirty seconds later, it starts with that half p or t of the last instruction.