6/29 Once again overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of things we need to not forget and get right this week. None of them is particularly hard, but just to keep track of them all puts me into a state of stress and angst. I do what I shouldn’t do, but allow myself this week, and take half a Klonopin. Fall asleep in the car as we drive to Newburgh. More sleep on the bed. Then Magic in the evening, exciting games. So cool, I say. No, it’s not cool, says J, and of course she’s right.

6/28 This day feels like the one after the election in 2016: muted, numb. Seeking comfort in the thought that after politics goes to pieces, life still somehow goes on. Unless it doesn’t, which is also less consequential than you’d think. Let’s keep this here as a time capsule: Biden cannot win this election anymore, and he’s not stepping down.

6/27 Disaster. J had said in advance she did not want to watch it and instead practiced violin. When she came over after a while she couldn’t help but want to know how it was going. We watched a few minutes together. It was so painful. 

6/26 It feels daunting how this time next week we’ll be right in the middle of our insane Copenhagen project. It will be okay. Even if we just winged everything from now on, it would be okay.

6/25 Spent much of the day copying information between different windows.

6/24 Dentist. I had skipped one appointment since my last cleaning almost a year ago. I pay for it with a lot of tough scratching and pulling, a lot of bleeding, and many shreds of gum in the sink. Also, the crown of my already-dead wisdom tooth comes off. The x-rays – made by a machine that is more like a radar gun, it doesn’t hum like they did some decades ago, only beeps – those x-rays reveal that the root canal underneath is inflamed and will have to be redone. This root canal, I remember, is one of the last things I had my dentist in Germany do. Going to the dentist in another country is one of the things you’d hesitate with the most, expecting the worst. They might well be butchers. It turned out the American ones are just as experienced, just as friendly, just as opinionated as the German ones. They would have done the root canal differently, just like any craftsman will tell you the foundations of your house were done wrong. – Also, you don’t ever get to see one. Everybody in the practice has been wearing masks all the time since 2020, and the doctors never take their magnifying scopes off, so it’s hard to remember any of them by their face, since there are no faces.

6/23 His seat is at the top of the table. He brings beer for the men, with cooler sleeves around the bottles. He brings a second bottle, even though I’m hardly finished with the first, and tells me it’s okay if I don’t want it. He lays his hand on my back, not just briefly, but long and decidedly. The fact that some immigrants get college for free bothers him deeply – his voice almost shaking – when he had to pay so much for his own kids. I tell him the stages of my process: seven years visa, six years green card, one year naturalization. He says I applaud you.

6/22 Heat wave. Staying inside.

6/21 With all the books in the world at my fingertips, all the recommendation engines, and all the instant communication with anyone who’d want to tell me about any book, I still feel like I’m in a Barnes & Noble, not a Strand.

6/20 First time I went to the office in a long time. An intern, less than half my age, wanted to ask me some questions. She had prepared for it with written notes. I wonder if the way I feel now is similar to the way those whom I asked those questions thirty years ago felt.