3/31 Paul, thirty years ago: When I look at the world, I see ERROR. As if dividing by zero on a calculator. Anybody with a clear mind must see ERROR.

3/30 What happens to us as a species, now that we have planetary power? And: How can I keep my world from shrinking? These two questions are, in a first approximation, what keeps me up at night, or what keeps me alive.

Planetary: The fact that we can effect change on a global scale. That we can change ourselves. All with a simultaneous explosion of communication – or a collapse into a communication singularity.

Shrinking: It’s what my world always does. I forget how to live, every day. I get reminded by people who make the world larger. They electrify me. I don’t think I’m one of those. I wish I were.

3/29 Our lives are still so unpredictable that I just cannot manage to work out consistently even two weeks in a row. I guess I should be happy about that.

3/28 No matter what you look at in MTG, even the tiniest detail, you fall into a rabbit hole. It is a strange comfort that there’s a subculture of people actually building these rabbit holes. I’m not enough of a nerd that I’d want to meet any of them – or maybe that makes me the ultimate nerd – but I’m glad they are there. And this maddening piling on of complexity happens everywhere we turn our eyes as a species, in microprocessor architecture, in genetic research, in the growth of a city.

3/27 Only two hours of sleep, a day as if in jetlag. Only natural that I’m barely good for anything. Not only can’t I do the things I can normally do, I also don’t have the power to expect anything from me. Body battery in the 20s, is what my watch calls this.

3/26 If the positions you take are entirely governed by emotions, or moral instincts, it may in fact be appropriate to consider them only as arbitrary positions of switches, not the conclusions of rational chains of arguments. Then again, every day I read people voicing thoughts that would never have occurred to me.

3/25 Swam in the morning. Both lanes and the side of the unlaned part of the pool, where the old ladies are chatting, were occupied. Got waved in by a woman in the leftmost lane who allowed me to share it with her. It always wrecks all the concentration when you have to share a lane, but it gets the laps in. Only the last 500 yards I got to swim in a lane of my own. If four or five people end up coming to the pool every morning, it’s done for.

3/24 Blank.

3/23 Greater Newburgh Symphony, Rule of Threes.

My opinions seem to me like an array of switches, either on or off. Each setting leads to an entirely predictable set of responses, already prepared, easily retrievable. I remain silent. 

3/22 Back to Newburgh. Uber from train station. Driver listens to a preacher podcast. Appalled by the immorality of America, using the example of a rap singer with what he considers obscene lyrics getting invited to the White House. No reasoning is given, he assumes that mentioning it is enough and the audience will share his disgust.