4/30 Oh and that trip to Brooklyn. We drove there from Newburgh, and then, after the reading, home to Manhattan. So much asphalt, so much metal, so much horizontal and vertical, and pot holes, and lights. Hard to believe this is all the same city, even harder to believe all of this was one day, and we lived through it.

4/29 Went to a reading in a bookshop in Brooklyn. It never occurred to me how inventing a fictional character seems like the brain simulating that character, not fully controlled by the author, much like dreams work. It is definitely surprising how the brain is able to generate that much world – using vast amounts of knowledge that is not normally accessible. I do remain certain I have an unusually small amount of that knowledge, since people, even the most ordinary ones, are mysterious and incomprehensible to me even in real life. And my dreams are mostly about me being naked and unable to move.

4/28 We will need a few years to explore this.

For lack of a better comparison, getting married feels very much like being plunged into the zone of totality during a solar eclipse, as the shadow of the moon moves over you, and everything inside is different and cannot really be explained to anyone outside.

4/27 10.52am That special kind of closeness we are feeling for each other right now.

4/26 We are told that within a 48-hour bubble before and after the event we have a special pass for being somewhat weird.

4/25 This wedding is beginning to feel like a roller coaster leaving the station.

4/24 Along the Hudson the cherry trees are in their zenith. The petals are so thick and tightly packed that the trees seem almost comically overloaded. Meanwhile, the magnolia down on Broadway has, as if overnight, receded into being just another inconspicuous tree. It must have happened during the many days I spent in Newburgh these past few weeks.

4/23 My mind has always worked the same – this general state of emptiness, poverty, and my desperation about it, interrupted by bouts of meaning and creativity, which I cannot voluntarily initiate, and which grip me so much that I’m unable to even realize what is happening. All of this, the lows and the highs of the intensity, are the same as they were decades ago. I did not at any point become a richer, more capable person. Yes, I did learn some things, yes, I did get more used to myself. But none of that changed who I am in any fundamental way.

4/22 Went out to dinner, and then, instead of returning home as usual, went to the gaming store up Broadway, J bought cards and dice and we played. Feeling boldly adventurous. Don’t worry, you’ll never play that deck again.

4/21 In a room with two other people, it is quite unlikely that I will not fall silent while they maintain the conversation.