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.

8/11 More horror news every day. I feel numb to them. When this is over, that will have to be rebuilt. And that. And that. Oh, and that also. When this is over, everything will be rebuilt.

J thinks I may be even more of a musician than a writer, because music has said no to me repeatedly and I never accepted that, I always tried to squeeze a way around it.

8/10 And into the city, where we meet J’s ex-husband and his mother, who is on the path of Alzheimer’s. It is a shock for J to see her decay, she didn’t expect it to be this far, even since June, when they last spoke. I take a picture of J and her, where she does not look into the camera, but into a void, yet all her focus, all that is left of it, seems on J.

What I’m learning from Chris comes down to some unbelievably simple insights. I can play any melody in the right, and the chords to it in the left. I thought I’d have to play chords in the right, with the voicings so cleverly chosen that the melody comes out on top. I thought I’d have to do arpeggios and all sorts of rhythmic patterns in the left, and without those, it wouldn’t sound like a song at all. But all of that is optional. I can and I should play without any of it, and build it up slowly while always playing. So abundantly clear that I must learn again to play like a child, cherishing each and every progress. but actually make it.

8/9 Back to Newburgh. I had slept terribly and was not able to contribute much driving, and for a while I lay down on the back bench of the Jeep. That’s very bumpy. It requires a great deal of trust that your partner is driving just as reasonably as always, even though to you it feels like a roller coaster that does not quite meet safety standards.

8/8 The community N found to start his new life in Pittsburgh is wonderful. A spaceship, loosely resembling life on earth, but everything is a little prettier, a little easier, a little tidier. An assisted living facility, but for the young, and it works best for autistic people like N. An indefatigably beaming young staffer shows us around. The complex was built in 2015, but they take great care to make it look like brand new, always, and so it does. A fountain and beds of flowers in front of a law office. The Main Street is called Main Street, the Town Center is called Town Center, and the company where N will work is on Technology Drive.

8/7 Seven hour drive to Pittsburgh.

8/6 Chris: Rabbit holes only ten minutes a day.

8/5 Asked what I’m working on, I say I feel silenced. Not by any particular threat, just by the madness unfolding all around me. She responds by describing a musical performance she just recently went to, the stage, the scenery.

It was about eight when a lone cicada started making its chopping, whirring sound somewhere up in the trees.

8/4 Removed the Google Feed from my phone. Switching to it has become an automatic, mindless gesture for me, rewarded by being dropped into ever more ad-infested click bait. Just like with Facebook, I have to concede that I am not strong enough to choose or not choose it voluntarily; I have to actually remove it to break the habit. That’s an admission I have refused to make for decades, and the implications go far.

8/3 No matter how much Germany learned from its past, the Third Reich remains a mysterious, almost extraterrestrial event. Some evil people had come out of nowhere and led an innocent country into the abyss. Within this innocent country, evil minions materialized – also from nowhere – and executed the will of the evil people at the top; after the downfall, these minions disappeared into the void from which they had come. The country remained as innocent as it had been and pulled itself back together under new, good administrations. – Of course thousands of pages have been written that go beyond this idea, but in everyday life it persists, otherwise there wouldn’t be a book like “Was I the only one who cheered?”