9/17 How, without creativity, we are instantly trapped.

It doesn’t look like we’re able to get the children here more often in the year. Long game. Long game.

Every writer carries all the possible motivations for writing. All that’s important is not to think about them too much, and simply write.

Interview Ezra Klein – Zadie Smith. That’s the kind of conversation that makes my heart beat faster. The world is not devoid of this. It is possible to light that spark. Why can’t I?

Lights in the building across the street. Almost every floor now has lights. Still unclear how many are inhabited. I know from the time when I checked various empty apartments in my building here just how incomprehensibly different the different perspectives can look. I have no idea what it looks like from the building I see in front of me.

I went to the gym today, I ran, I played piano. I did work for my job that could rightfully be called a full workday. Writing group in the evening: three of us, then two. I saw wood carvings from Jen in which she took the structure of the wood as a prompt, and turned it into something which, when printed, had the appearance of water.

I read the essay for myself, in its entirety, for the first time, and decided it was not ready to show.

I brought J’s suitcase to Rimowa on Madison, where they considered the lost wheel a warranty case, but it will take four weeks nonetheless (the initial estimate was six weeks, but when I said we travel pretty much all the time, he said he’d see what he could do, and I got an email receipt estimating the four weeks).

J’s mother had surgery, with as yet unclear results.

9/16 I’m writing the postcards similar to how I talk: with a German accent.

9/15 J asks the valid question why I’m doing ear training again, trying to recognize individual scale degrees. I do it because I’m told it’s the prerequisite to recognizing chords, and I want to be able to play more instinctively, without having to read or memorize it.

9/14 Concert of opera arias. A woman behind me in the audience sings along with several of them – a broken, leathery voice, not hitting the notes. I realize after a while that these may be involuntary vocalizations. I adjust to listening to both the arias and these vocalizations as specimens of the human voice.

9/13 Newburgh. One of the consequences of going to concerts or to the gym around here: You realize that the people you meet there are the same ones driving the cars you encounter in the road. That explains a lot.

9/12 I do not want to write about politics. I feel unqualified for it. Yet I wonder what would happen if I forced myself to write about it, one essay a month for example, where I could trace one of those very weird and completely naive thoughts I have about politics.

9/11 Wrote my second batch of ten postcards. Wondering whether it’s really about feeling good because your hand hurts.

9/10 Watched the debate.

9/9 Wrote my first postcards. My batch will go to Georgia entirely. I marvel at the names of the people and the small towns I’m writing to: Norcross, Hinesville, Decatur.

9/8 How matrimony elevates just about everything to a new meaning. A concept such as: “she is going inside, I will sit here for a little while longer” has a very different sound to it now, because it’s forever.