8/21 Strangest of evenings. The sun had set behind the buildings on the New Jersey waterfront, turning them into a dark backdrop, yet the sky behind them was still bright orange and purple and everything felt like daylight, and yet the lights in the buildings, and also far north along the George Washington, had already come on, and they seemed in perfect balance with the other lights of this evening. Also, the river: short waves modulated onto a long-rolling swell, a kind of grey-green-brown liquid metal.

8/20 In the lesson with Chris I remembered how J recently said I was playing a piece really well. – “And you haven’t even practiced it.” – “What do you mean, I’ve been practicing it for a week?” – “You’ve been playing it, but you haven’t practiced it.”

8/19 The woman in the row in front of me on the train had a far-carrying alto voice and I was lucky enough to move one row further away from her before the train left. It’s not her fault that her voice carries that far, I thought. Then I realized she was talking non-stop throughout the entire journey, and I thought, well maybe that’s just her temperament. And then she told a story in which at some point she’d said “I want to talk to the principal”, and all the excuses collapsed.

8/18 I’d love to use weight loss drugs to tackle those 10 or 20 pounds that separate me from the weight and body shape I’d like to have. But the quizzes from the different providers seem to just laugh at me. With such a starting weight I do not qualify for those drugs. I need to do it the old-fashioned way, counting calories and making sensible choices. The app asks me why I want this. To look better. Yes, it’s that simple, and that’s how vain I am. But the app wants to know more. Why do I want that? I don’t even remember how I answered that question, and the app suggested we’d do yet another, deeper why, but I declined, and left it at that.

8/17 Even though it is still a month from now, Link realizes N is leaving. This must be so unmistakably in the air.

8/16 More troops of the National Guard deployed to Washington. From conservative states. There is nothing to say about it. Everything has already been said. And so now it just happens.

8/15 A country loses all the numbers. No jobs report, no inflation, no approval ratings, and of course, no elections. Where does a country go when all the numbers disappear?

8/14 Musical discovery: The Lydian Collective. For the first time in forever, I don’t want to listen to their second album until I have spent quite some time with their first.

8/13 Looking up from the screen and realizing the window is covered with raindrops. Some of them trickle in that stepwise, as if searching, downward motion. The sky is not dark, but orange, just way too muted for the time of day. Jittery lightning.

8/12 I’d rather not know how fast a six- or ten-year-old could learn these things on the piano that take me weeks. J says I’m so much more disciplined and thorough about it than a child, but I don’t see why this would precisely balance my slower learning. It does not. But then again, I have only this brain, only these hands, only this musicality, or lack thereof, and that’s what I’m dealing with, and how I learn to speak this language.