11/6 Devastated, numb. Hangover from a lot of whiskey and an entire bag of sour patch kids. It is a similar kind of numb as in 2016, although I readily believe it when I hear that in Manhattan, people are not walking around as if after an explosion, crying. (I was in Ohio in 2016, and I’m in Newburgh today.) Back then, it felt as if an error, an accident had happened that nobody had actually wanted, only some had not quite foreseen what their actions might lead to, just like kids throwing rocks from a bridge over a highway just to see what happens. Not so this time.

The cashier in the supermarket asks: How are you doing? – Not good. – What’s wrong? – The news. – Well, have a good day.

I am slowly assembling a list of my fears and griefs, somewhere in there being the shame of having become a part of this country at just exactly this point in time, when it shows so devastatingly what it – for the most part – is made of. I also realize it is now up to me to work towards the country I thought I moved into.

11/5 Oh damn I didn’t expect this. Big rush of emotion as I walked into a US polling place for the first time, and my eyes may or may not have gotten a little wet.

It’s a school gym and it very much feels like a school fair. People walking around everywhere, some sitting behind desks, doing mysterious things. You have to check which is your voting district and go to the corresponding desk where they check who you are. I did not need to show any document, just answer: first three letters of your last name, first three letters of your first name, address. The woman looks that up on a tablet, gets my voter record that matches the information, asks me to sign on the tablet. Then I get my ballot, which is a huge folded piece of cardboard with the actual ballot inside. I’m supposed to go to one of the privacy booths to open it and fill it out. The woman gives me the hint that if a candidate’s name is printed in multiple columns, I must only select one of them. This is fusion voting, I later learn, specific to New York, and very confusing. I wonder how many ballots turn out invalid because of it. There are little ovals on the ballot I’m supposed to fill completely with ink. I guess if you grew up in America with all the multiple choice tests in school you are kind of used to this – for me it is still new. The guy next to me checks a lot of things on his phone while filling out the ballot, and I ask him to confirm whether I’m really supposed to select just one of the candidate columns. As I leave the voting booth I do not know what to do with the ballot, which I’m now holding enclosed in its privacy envelope again. Knowing only German elections, I assumed I’d have to drop it into some kind of box near the exit, but that’s not the case, the people at the exit point me over to the counting machines on the other side of the hall. This is where I take the ballot out of its privacy envelope and feed it into the machine, which shows on its screen that the ballot has been counted, and it has now been dropped into a padlock-secured box underneath the screen.

11/4 Woman on the flight wears a P100 mask and spreads out an aluminum blanket over her seat before sitting down. She also has a big bag of groceries with her, containing lots of salad in clear plastic bags, among other things, from which she eats. A gigantic apple. She also eats the in-flight meal though, and she is not very consistent about wearing her P100, even when not eating.

Made it back to New York in time (9pm), no hurricane, no missed connection, no airline strike, so I will actually be able to cast my vote tomorrow, early in the morning.

11/3 It was in our very last hour that we took out the telescope, finally clear skies, and watched Jupiter and Saturn. Oh those rings. Bright jewel in silence. Had to wait several seconds for the vibrations in the telescope on its pretty flimsy mount to calm down, and then, barely for a few moments, it was so bright and so delicate. The same point-of-a-needle sharpness that makes the moons appear so precious, but here it is the rings, extending left and right of the disk, of immeasurable width, just hairlines. 

At breakfast, which for some reason both my son and I like to eat early, when everything’s quiet, we consider those last few moments of our day in which we saw this as the best part of the entire week, fully acknowledging possible recency bias. We will revisit this at the end of the week in our video call, when all the things are at a more equal distance.

11/2 Watched The Wild Robot. Group hug.

11/1 In a democracy, if you win an election, you haven’t won anything yet. (I just remembered this thought which I probably wrote down somewhere already.)

10/31 Halloween. Carved baby pumpkins, which we’d brought from New York, with surgical instruments. Electric candles were an amazingly smart choice of mine. Not thinking outside the box, but thinking inside the pumpkin – a dad joke that gets high ratings even from the kids. Daughter invites three other teenagers over and they watch a horror movie.

10/30 Jetlag day, tough to get through. Discussed the function of transmission and clutch with my son in the supermarket. Space helmet.

10/29 Mother in front of the biometric gate, rocking her child by changing the angle that her straightened legs form, left and right.

Why is it called “flight information” on the screens inside the plane? Why isn’t it just the flight? Or the speed? What is a bird’s flight information?

The vegetarian meal option contains balls of impossible meat. A woman in the row before us is appalled by it, complains to the attendant that she did not get the vegetarian option. I can’t see whether, after an explanation, she actually eats it, but she does study the paper menu again carefully, in apparent disbelief. 

Flashing red light on the front bulge of the plane, seen from above by the exterior camera at the front of the vertical stabilizer, the only thing visible in the dark, and the image is muddled by water or ice around the lens.

10/28 Harari: the suicide of the conservative parties.