4/20 Rhinebeck, a Western Symphony Orchestra plays with a Japanese Koto. You hear something alien, yet you do not know how much the alien is already adjusting to you. True for any encounter with anything alien.

4/19 My job turns more and more into saying the right words to the right people at the right time. If I can’t find them quickly enough, the opportunity’s gone. If I don’t say them in the right context, they won’t work.

Ran tempo intervals in the afternoon. By Strava’s fitness graph, I’m at my lowest in the last two years. Other graphs tell different stories. It is amazing though that the speed at which I ran an entire mile two years ago, is one that I can’t even maintain for a minute right now.

Told my son I have never worn a bow tie before. He finds that completely unbelievable. What, my father has never worn a bow tie? There may be an important realization in that. (It may also be a cultural difference between Europe and the US.)

4/18 I’d have something to tell about Barzini tonight, but I have to start by saying that I don’t even know who of the two guys down in the grocery store, both middle-aged, both behaving as if they were the owner, is the actual Barzini. And there’s no way for me to find out, because in the five years that I’ve lived here I have never been able to have any kind of conversation with them, no smile, not even eye contact. It is true that I don’t like conversations with anybody, and my demeanor must be radiating that very clearly. Yet in five years, there would normally have been moments when I’d let down my guard, especially with people who see no need to smile at me. But in their case, the two radiations just seem to amplify each other. Back home, I can indeed find out who the real Barzini is, because on their store’s instagram, among dozens of food pics, there’s also two of him, but not of the other guy.

4/17 We are sitting by the open window in our 9th floor apartment as we have our writing group via Zoom. It’s April, the noise of a garbage truck outside on Broadway is weirdly loud, as if it’s breaking through with fresh clarity in the suddenly warm weather. I wonder if Zoom will filter it out from the audio, or whether it’s an authentic Manhattan sound backdrop we should just own. Ultimately, I can smell the garbage through the open window, at which point I decide to close it.

4/16 Getting your marriage license is a lot like going to the DMV. You get a number, you wait for a counter to be called forward to. Well, the building is indeed slightly more festive than the average DMV, and there are glittery hearts on the walls behind the counters. You show your documents, you say your social, you get the license which is to be signed and put in force at the wedding, for which we are in the process of hiring a Justice of the Peace, enlisting an organization called Judges For Love. We’re joking about it all the time.

City Hall is also where the trial of the former president is under way, there are thus loads of police and barricades everywhere, although hardly any people, except other couples getting their marriage licenses. I am now Spouse B and could have gotten a t-shirt to that effect.

4/15 And again: I wish I would not have written what I wrote yesterday, but then again, it’s what I wrote, and it has to go out, that is the rule.

Bright spring day, lots of people by the river at seven, when I ran.

Never thought a wedding would be such a critical path. And we left out many of the things that you’d normally do for a wedding. Still, a countdown, we’ve been talking about it daily for at least the past 180 days. Getting our license at city hall tomorrow.

4/14 Writing is where I accept no limit. In all other areas, in my job, in music, in sport, I could do more, but I don’t.

4/13 Set up new couch pieces in J’s home. There was a time in my life when I would have been furious at the idea of having a couch. If I’d ever succumb to that, all would be lost, and I could no longer face myself in the mirror. Today I’d suggest one should work on so many things that it is seriously exhausting, and if you can look at these things and agree, yes, that these are the things you want to be working on, then yes, a couch is a great thing to have. We’re having our best conversations on our couches and there is never time to turn on the television.

4/12 On the rooftop across from me – which actually belongs to a fairly small building, only 6 floors high, I look down to it from above  – a new light has been installed above the door that exits to that rooftop. It is quite a bright light, and it comes on every few minutes for a few seconds, as if it was linked to a staircase light or elevator light inside the building. I wish they would shield that light a little, or come up with another way to light that exit door, because it’s quite distracting when I look out my big window. But of course, this is America, and this is Manhattan, and a light coming on and off every few minutes is nothing anybody would ever complain, or take a complaint, about. It’s fine. It gets lost in the blur, in the subconscious. Just as I cannot even remember whether that door on that rooftop even existed a few weeks ago, or was recently added, since there’s a whole lot of renovation going on in that building, which is fully scaffolded.

4/11 When in doubt, make a fool of yourself remains an excellent rule for writing. Also, the more doubt, the better.