9/10 J’s mother survived the surgery of which we thought it might kill her with a probability of maybe fifty percent.

There’s something calming in caring for a cat. We’re getting used to each other.

9/9 First you refuse to age, to decline, in any dimension. As a matter of fact, you believe you should be rising in each and every one of these dimensions. Then you realize that you have to let go of some dimensions in order to focus on others. You still refuse to age, because there are some, and maybe only one left where you are still rising. But you will have to come to terms with declining in all dimensions. Or do you? Isn’t creativity still possible even while in decline, and isn’t any creative moment, anything that comes to you out of nowhere, life as pure, and as young, as it gets?

9/8 As I come back above Eastern New York on an almost perfectly southbound course, thirty-six thousand feet up in an evening sky, a realm where the sun has set only minutes ago and the horizon is a deep orange, I tell J that I’m passing over Plattsburgh, Burlington, and Newburgh, where she is, but I wonder whether these realities, when there’s nothing that could possibly make them intersect, are really that different from thoughts and stories.

9/7 Spent most of the weekend playing Magic. Increasing sophistication. My older son can’t help but suggest improvements to each of our individual gameplay. I continue to be puzzled by my slow speed of thinking and inability to keep several parameters in my head at the same time. In a Magic game, I basically can only believe what the others are doing, I have no capacity to follow their moves and understand their mechanics. – This is odd, because don’t I have reason to believe I am of above-average cognitive abilities? You wouldn’t believe it when you see me read a book, hold a conversation, or play a game. I feel reminded of my chess club experience. It was the lowest league of chess club there is, and yet despite much trying, I was unable to be anything but the worst player in the club, for several seasons.

9/6 Update: He did text me when he took off for his final segment.

9/5 I talked to my son about his flights to Sweden once – about two weeks ago. Today is the day. I feel so tempted to reach out to him, ask him how it’s going, whether he actually is on the flight, and whether it’s on time. That’s probably my version of the annoying parent who says “give us a call when you get home”. So I will sit on my hands and not reach out to him, I will simply show up at the airport at the time his flight is supposed to land. If for any reason anything has not gone according to plan, he would have let me know.

9/4 Sitting among the rich people in the airline lounge. I am one of them.

The flight attendant talks German to me without hesitation. After a while I relent and also talk German. It’s a distant German, though. For example, I call the Laugenbrötchen Bretzel, because I can’t remember the word Laugenbrötchen.

9/3 J’s place is here. This story with her mother is so unique and so important that there’s really no question about it at all. My reaction to it does surprise me a little. I realize I have an instinct of what is the right thing to say, even right down to the tone of voice, and then I just say that. It wasn’t like that ten years ago. Also, a woman in the Lufthansa call center, probably in India, allowed me to rebook her flight way into October.

9/2 Now it’s all waiting for hints whether J can fly to Sweden with me on Thursday. It’s all booked, it cannot be cancelled, and the children are hoping to see J. And the surgery that was supposed to happen today did not.

9/1 Second day alone. Another run on the bridge, back and forth, my third altogether. It is nothing but straight ahead, 3.2 miles, and you can see exactly where you are going. A point you will reach in 1 minute or in 10 minutes doesn’t look very different. I like this minimalism. On the way back, East to West, I run into the sun. – Also, figured out how the cat feeder works. The model has apparently been discontinued, it only sells in some South American markets now. And there is no manual online. Yet there’s a basic digital literacy that I acquired in the seventies and eighties, an instinct about pressing buttons long or short which will get you there. J is amused by it, I am so German about it, because she will just let the feeder run at its default settings, the clock in no relation to the actual time, and the feeding intervals at whatever the machine starts out with.