February 12. Psychological processes rarely seem plausible to me. For example, when I react irritably to anxious people, I am told it is because I spent a quarter of my life with an overanxious person. I have a hard time understanding the causal connection; it doesn’t seem evident to me. I take it for rationality, and impatience over irrationality. But if then, after sufficient repetition, the story seems plausible to me – does that make it true? Does it possibly become true only for that reason – and do psychological explanations succeed only for that reason – because they are perceived as plausible?

February 11. Bad night. Bad rage I might just be be bad as a father.

February 10. Been to the DMV again. This time I had all the right documents, but my case worker had never done a process with a medical certificate before and had to ask his coworkers every step of the way. For a while it looked like it wouldn’t work this time either. After all, the wording on the letter from the Albany medical certificate office was not completely clear. But then a gray-haired, very experienced colleague came along who knew the crucial thing, namely that the confirmation was already in the computer and the wording of the letter was therefore completely irrelevant. And so the processes finally all rattled off and I got my provisional driver’s license, valid for four years, four years that I now have time to take the driving test.

February 9. Five years ago I gave away all the books. Yes, I never missed them. Not the books, but their content. The content of the books that were never digitized, and since in Germany the rule is: the more sophisticated, the more paper, and I read sophisticated books, that’s all gone. My reading past is gone, and as far as the future is concerned, I’m equally cut off. Cut off from all the small, fabulous publishers where I used to find marvels. They all do little to nothing digitally. It’s malnutrition, it’s sad. But alright. I’ll just have to find my reading material elsewhere in the world. It’s one of the reasons why I’m increasingly moving away from Germany.

February 8. Due to my only slowly increasing experience with high heels I fell down the subway stairs pretty badly. Picked myself up and walked onto the platform as composedly as possible. Sat down next to a Black woman (who hadn’t seen the fall) and she instantly said I was wearing them better than she could.

February 7. The invention of printing leads to a chaos of information that later results in the Enlightenment. Is this story plausible, and if not, how could one prove that it was different? And if the present chaos (is it a chaos?) leads to a higher stage, does it do so necessarily, or does something have to be done for it to happen?

February 6. Dissatisfied. I’m working on far too little. And what I am working on, I am not working on properly.

February 5. Chefs in the sushi restaurant, as if behind switchboards.

February 4. I’m concerned that I might do in music like I did in chess. I was in a club for two years and just didn’t get any better, I was always the worst player. On the other hand, compare how J wants to practice nothing but scales for a year in order to become better on the violin.

February 3. With J at the doctor. Full anesthesia on the massage bench. Rest of the day use of all available means to keep a wildly flaring pain in check.