Feb 10

Liberty Mutual bot makes this memorable because email overnight arrives this morning and makes it sound like if I don't pay (already on auto-pay but could they note that ?) they will cancel  my whole life.  

By the end of the day the auto-pay should have posted.  Fingers crossed.  

Bela seems mostly over her bout with the cold.  We talked with Roy yesterday, he called on his new number.  Jonah there but do not know his number.  They seem fine.  He sounds like himself but barely recalls just who he is talking with, agrees to vague idea of getting together.  

Is that how Burgo will sound if I call him?  Fingers crossed.

Good news---Dennis got the go ahead and expects to move Feb 20.  Fingers crossed.

Other good news the media play bad bunny's superbowl show is getting as the best resistence to the regime we've seen yet at that level of money and power.  Fingers crossed.  

After Handke:  I grew up on the hills of shale along the banks of the Potomac River in MD.  I've lived most of my life on the granite ledges along the Pemigewasset River in NH.  I've retired to the volcanic lava beds and desert escarpment overlooking the Rio Grande in NM. 

pp 72-73  in slow homecoming  "in any countryside whatever characteristic forms reveal themselves . . .inconspicuous elements no scientific insight can lay bare    on the next page  the feeling of being at home

Pablo replies, can we do it Thursday, now 11:29  if/when we go to the store should I buy some sort of sinus pressure relief concoction or leave it to chance, aspirin here or there ?  

Valentin Sorger after a concert in Berkeley, a large man, want to know who that might have been (Burl Ives? Johnny Cash? but point is not to know but to read Handke's words about it, about how the experience worked for Sorger at that moment.  

here it is --- starts at the bottom of page 45  "The man who rose from the ground was not ecstatic, only appeased.  He no longer expected illuminations, only measure and duration."   This is right after his "first intimation of the river landscape.  "My face is an unfinished sketch---when will it be complete?"  

"(And then there was even a kind of hope---disguised as a feeling that he knew something.)" 46 

Knowing (T mode?) disguised as a feeling (F mode).  

The art works in the museum, the two big exhibits, disappointed after they wowed.  Such scale, determination, money, polish, savy market/audience-wise, right in the bullseyes of the zeitgeist targets, identity vengeance.  

The singer   "He didn't sing with feeling but searched frantically for a feeling which was as puzzling to him as to anyone else."  82

quiet Sunday

We skipped Chatter, slept in.  Trying to get over my cough/cold once and for all.  Trying to make sure Bela has not really caught it.  She walked lots yesterday, 4k? I walked lots too, around Old Town.  Still had coughing bout around 2 am.  Feels good though to chill today.  Strange visit to the dentist at Salud on Atrisco.  Indian dentist and assistant.  Showed me it would cost $990.00 for the "deep clean" that Va's teeth clearly needed. After asking me politely if she were demented.  Said no and we left.  

So loving Handke's Slow Homecoming.  Exciting and thrilling.  Not so much Fosse.  I dutifully read to the end, and carefully,  The Other Name.  The death of the boy was the unexpected point of danger, the car ride with the bald old man too predictable and somehow unconvincing, or maybe unmoving.  Maybe the Latin prayers obstruct my view.  The darkness shining and shining darkness are fine.  Why could he not have been happy with that, stayed with that, left it at that.  Modian and Handke are born in the "correct" years!  Fosse I would group with "boomers" but then I would have to allow that Lentz falls into that chronological nonsense too.  

Neighbor over the back wall removed the big blue and black plastic tarps from his patio yesterday.  Sure sign of Spring?  Feels nice and warm these days.  Wrote various messages to Jonah Stephenson, hoping to hear from him about Roy.  Paper card in mail, email and facebook message.  Marilyn's cardiac inversion on Friday went well.  Bela now enjoying book about Julia Child.  

Back to Handke for me.  Do I need to skim some 2-3 star comments in goodreads about Fosse?  Had forgotten that Knausgaard was Fosse's student in writing course(s).  Fosse's plays widely produced where silence does what stream repetition does in the narratives.  

Ok, I read this one, and I read the Melancholy I.  I can let him go.  No need to read more even though in anticipatory enthusiasm, or anxiety hyped proto-enthusiasm, I bought copies of other titles.  

Now sipping the newest ceremonial cacao to arrive in the house, this from Embue, Moses Draper who started the company in Brattleboro before moving to Costa Rica.  Must be a lucrative cacao scam just like the others!!  One email said he was sending me the new version of the golden spoon, but it wasn't in this first package.  Do like the cacao in mixable form rather than the chunks provided by the other company.  But the golden frother is not gold and has a three step power button that easily makes a big mess.  The Zylo frother is just fine.  Zulo, Pacho, ? all no doubt made in same shop in China.  

Back to Handke.  And in celebration I broke my chronological discipline by starting in on the collection of essays published much later in career than Slow Homecoming.  Quiet Places.  Opening essay about the crucial importance of time in the toilet to get away from people and listen to silence.  At once I think of the toilet in the basement of the Grand Avenue store.  First the low ceiling of the basement, almost everyone had to duck to avoid hitting one's head on the pipes and floor joists above.  The toilet you had to step up into, two steps? it was up on the edge of the outer wall of the basement, also low ceiling, so you had to find a way to step up and stoop down, double over, and push your rear back onto the ring seat without falling over.  Seated you could then squat comfortably and think in perfect embodiment of Rodin's muscled hero.  

Handke lived in Berkeley 1978-79.  There is no Northern Lights boulevard there, I wonder if he tweaked City Lights bookstore into that street name.  

A Whole Day almost

 on Apple News, scanning, scrolling, dumbing out while Victoria cleaned the house and I tried to think of how Handke would have said something interesting about that, if not brilliant.  My cold is receding, good night's sleep last night with bed is almost vertical back up position.  Advil cold and sinus at 9 am, pseudephrine to the rescue thanks to 4 am delivery from amazon.  

The cold hit me a week ago tomorrow when I parked at the flixbrew lot and now I realize it must have been from lunching at the Flying Star earlier that day.  Big crowd of people, lots of germs, food and fingers, all the contextual carriers and instigators of immune system overload.  We've almost spent the whole week in the house.  Went out to Wal mart one day.  My energy has been really low all week.  Best today so far.  Day off tomorrow, maybe the art museum to see the big photos that Kith mentioned last sunday.  She was very pleased with her neckace of fetishes.  Wish we remembered where we bought those.  

Today Bela commissioned a quinciañera cake from Victoria.  She imagines we will have some sort of party to sing the song and send the video to Emma.  Maybe we will get a mariachi group on a video if we go to Quartes on Sunday when they play there. 

Dissertation idea for someone:  study the journals of two or three writers.  Pessoa and Handke?  empty idea

"Looking out the window, an experience of beauty, yet unable (and unwilling) to say what is so wbeautiful out there and why:  beauty as a removal of limits, an experience of unexpected openness"  207 

"The only feeling that really proves one is alive: the feeling of unio mystica   212 

"the deadly mechanics of opinions   boy, perfect description of apple news, all news  

now at the last section, 1977  how does he decide to end this journal?  did he? or just carved out one volume for publication ,    

"my daily panic-fantasies 217  the furnace is still running, the roof does not (yet) leak 

1977 minus 1942  he is only, only! 35 years old    wow  

"Talk" has been so defamed . . . hardly anyone takes it seriously any more

he mentions as a great writer someone I've never heard of ---Doderer  

After page 243, two completely blank pages, then another at back with the bar scan code and Made in the USA Coppell, TX 28 December 2025    Is Coppell near Austin?  nope, in Dallas 

Ok---last Saturday at Star I ate that Spanish omelette and the huge chocolate cake.  Later in the week lots of animal foods, chicken, salmon, eggs, cheeses (pizza)---so this terrible week of severe cold has been an inflammation caused by sudden, extreme animal products and unrelenting cacao and dark chocolate over the last two to four months?  doctor g has spoken---now to put the question to chat or grok et al

not clear why Handke ends the published journal  

glad for it to end as good as it is, still it makes me try too hard to imitate it 

Yes, AI informs about the existential crisis within it and mentions a later journal, the story of the pencil--

ok, will not paste in here the ai details about his life during the journal, mild heart attack, sweet and sour love affair after collapse of marriage, daughter with him, anxiety, fear of death, etc  since we can find that in google search easily enough---forever  ---- 

Now back onward into the novel that seems so astonishing  -- Slow Homecoming, first volume out in 1979, Weight published in 1977   Nothing in 1978, in German,  That year Left-Handed Woman came out in English, had come out in German in 1976.  

Handke's Weight

 Really really enjoying Handke's journal now.  Just past half way.  Doctoral dissertation: analyze the journal as the fulcrum, the inflection point (to use this awful new term), or just study it's dictionary for the fun of it as a self-contained logo -verse.  

So many lines of such interest, power, dismay, strangness, rage, feeling, intimacy, insight, boredom.  He really shows what can be done, how not easy it is to produce such a volume in a year and a half, two years.  What else was he writing then, if anything?  "Sex: the ultimate enmity."   149  How much is observation, how much fiction?  "I go on talkimg while passing through the revolving door of a luxury hotel.  That'll show them."  150  

Rested all day hoping to get ride of the sore throat and cough from yesterday.  Took Va's stuff to Optum in the morning.  Bought another panera salad for her lunch, I had lentil soup.  

Slave to advertising again:  I wrote to Alcami saying hey where is my golden spoon and golden frother for the daily ritual??  

Change our return air tix to early morning through the MSP airport now that I learned that terrible info about weather over the ATL airport.  Explains why we got re-routed and canceled last summer.  Never again spending the night in an airport.  Going out next Jan might even go all the way to Phoenix or LAX and spend a night or even two to make the trip better.  

Looks like Gabriela won't be back to help out or swim.  No surprise there.  Bela on the piano now.  Will Pablo come back?  

Tomorrow the B&L lunch.  

Richter's Seasons

Chatter this morning super.  We both loved the music, Max Richter's reworking of Vivaldi's Four Seasons.  Big chamber group, wonderful sound, wonderful example of contemporary genius working with earlier genius to create old-new, new-old.  Woman next to me named Suzanne and her friend, Ginny, arrived yesterday, two day drive from Madison.  Here for few weeks, second or third time they've come for the sun and the air.  She grew up in Skowhegan, Maine and went to Madison for college and never went back to NE.  Majored in history and felt that was enough, didn't have the confidence in it to go any further in that direction.  Son with four children live near her, daughter works for the state department, currently stationed in Alberta.  Fun to talk with her.  Would have thought she was 78 but she said she is 85.   We agreed that 80 brought significant change in sense of what is going on, who we are, what's next.  Later Kith came to talk with us, she was thrilled with the fetish "necklace" we gave her, the ex voto sorts of things on the red silken cord.  We can't recall where we bought those.  Still have one at Rogers St.  Really missed not seeing Barb and Ed and Lou at Chatter.  See them on Tuesday.  

Looking into flying back and found out ATL has super high cancellation rates these days.  Will change to the earliest booking and/or look at American to see if they have more or different routes.  Coming back next winter should we look for other routes also.  

Slight sore throat this evening.  Watch two episodes of Pacific Criminals, it had upped it's budget significantly.  Still doing page or two at a time with Fosse.  Bit like Antunes in effect?  

dream

 Anxiety in dream last night, what dissertation topic would I choose?  Decided, relief, to study word choice as inward structure in work of Robert Browning.  Today Bela wears lavender and purple for Beckie.  Beckie just showed up wearing bright pink sweatshirt with a sort of wolf image on the front.  I am going to explore RiverFront Estates first thing, looked at the map, the turn is at the Chevron station where I stopped for air in a tire a year or two ago.  Bright.  Chilly but no breeze.  Will get close to 50 later on.  Big anticipation building because first Chatter tomorrow.  Oh--map just showed me that the correct spelling of this neighborhood is RiverfrontE Estates.  Wonder if they were going for a French tinge?  What book to take with me in the car today?  Picked up Fosse, then decided to cheat!  Oh dear.  Hmm

Chat trying too hard to please.  Long reply in chart format, or business meeting bullet format.  One line---"Septology II is less about seeing the world rightly and more about being held while you fail to see clearly."  Better one at another spot in the text--"Art, prayer, and breath begin to feel like the same activity."  That's good.  Now to ask Chat to delete all previous queries and replies.  

End of the day.  The new Altra shoes are terrific.  Walked on big stone gravel behind Star and enjoyed the walk.  Wearing them all day, walking various spots, one city park off Montaño.  Comfy.  Welcome change for the concrete floors here in the house and everywhere we go.  2696 steps today so far.  

Enjoyed starting the Handke novel, the difficult one according to Kunkel.  Slow Homecoming.  

Should I change flights?  Two hours in  MSP vs ATL?  slightly earlier departure from 11 am to 8 am.  Bela says no.  Leave well enough.  We are too comfortable with an 11:30 departure time.  See if a trip to PT shows up.  

wow Just learned something a bit worrisome about this question----257%  

Based on recent 2025-2026 data, 

ATL-BOS is more likely to be canceled than MSP-BOS due to higher overall flight volume, severe weather, and significantly higher rates of cancellation at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. ATL is ranked as a top airport for cancellations, whereas MSP generally shows better on-time performance. 

Key Considerations:

• Airport Performance: ATL consistently appears in data as a top airport for flight delays and cancellations, with a 257% increase in cancellations between 2024 and 2025, notes  and 
• Weather Impact: ATL is more vulnerable to sudden, severe weather impacting the Southeast and connecting traffic, according to data from 
• Time of Day: Regardless of the route, early morning flights (5 a.m. to 8 a.m.) are less likely to be canceled than those departing after 9 a.m., say and  

To minimize risk, select an early morning departure on either route. 

Guess I will change to MSP in spite of Bela's prefences!  

split personality as a solution

 "Split personality as a solution: the thought that I am not doing this damned kitchen work, but someone else, someone else . . . enables me, for moments at a time, to bear it without difficulty (the origin of schizonphrenia)   Handke, Weight, 100

Fosse and Handke feed boths sides of my split personality, both/and, and therein the failure of chatgpt.  It lined everything up on a spectrum so it could talk about left, center and right.  What I wanted was both/and.  At the end of Fosse's volume one he has fun with the stream becoming as rapid and blurred as possible until we get to death.  Now what will he do on volume II?  

Quiet day here.  Are we participating in the national strike in support of Minnesota against ICE.  Or having a quiet day for reading and dozing, dozing and reading?  Lot of that in Fosse.  I guess because I didn't close the book again I like him more than I think.  Or I'm curious to see for how long I can enjoy or stand his musical mannerisms.  Does he "perfect" Beckett?  Perhaps, although B would roll his eyes at the return to Rome.  Asle tries to shrug his shoulders and make it a paradox of his own split-personality, or the split between him as clear headed painter and his other self the drunken sleeper rescued from the doorway.  The death of grandfather split him into the two persons who we hear from and about.  

Bela deep into a second novel by a Kurdistani writer.  Sun super brilliant, sky super blue.  Warning message from the Rogers street thermostat but the temp readings seem ok.  So cold there, single temps day after day, below zero every night.  Yikes.  

I changed two door knobs today.  Me and one phillips screwdriver.  A first in my 81 years, a triumph.  

We did not lay in a store of mochis and so resorted to jelly on toast.  Cannot remember the name we used for hamburger in chili sauce on a bun that was common in our childhoods.  

Even with the admiration for what Fosse is doing with such perfection, the warmth of companionship flows to and from Handke.  Similar for M Cheney's small book on/about Barry Lopez.  An interdisciplinary memoir C Taylor would recognize in terms of genre and style.