decision day

Thursday 3 September

On the way home from walmart to buy miniature toiletries for the trip, took a call from MidState, Danielle saying since Dr Philips is away this week, my message asking about our trip went to Dr Fagan and he advises we not take the trip.  I had Danielle call us back twenty minutes later so Bela could hear the whole report and advice for herself.  We had lunch and talked it over a bit and decided to cancel the trip.  

Feeling now a few hours, and GH, later, a strange mix of relief and sadness and new worry about the report that her aortic valve has a new, severe restriction.  Dr Fagan indicated that was the primary concern in the decision to recommend travel.  Now some fear about whether a second heart valve procedure will take place and how well Bela will recover from it.  

DNMC just called to cancel the MRI scheduled for Saturday.  They want to dig into the history of the shunt before proceeding.  

Volvo Lebanon called earlier to explain the tech found a glitch in the software update involving the module for the brake, the emergency brake, so they have to order new parts and it will be a while until they get the fix for that.  

Who else called today?  Seems like someone else.  I canceled  the delta tickets and the full refund there will pay for the new HVAC in ABQ.   Yes, Juan had called early in the morning to say they were heading off to install all of that at 3601.  

Cool and rainy day, overcast.  Drizzle a bit when I was out to the store.  

6:51 pm  Juan just called.  Installation complete.  Gave him card number over the phone.  

No message from Lisa, don't know if they drove over or not.  

Well, with the trip off, am I now able to relax a bit more and not stress about it, which I have been doing these past few months whether I admitted it or realized it fully or not.  Didn't I keep brushing off the worries, trying to ignore them, face them down, chill them out with meditation.  And Aswaganda, etc.  Cacao.  

Relief too to have the MRI canceled at DHMC for Saturday.  Though they will reschedule.  

Main worry, then, is the meeting with Dr Flynn on Tuesday and his recommendations.  Also Dave and his future weeks, months, and years.  Bela's health.  Winter.  Air Travel at all??  going to Abq out?? 

Will we have a whole winter here after all?  Plant-based cuisine will save us.  

Mexican serial about love now on.  

George had a large article on the Dems in the Concord Monitor.  He sees his new career as "AI Prompter."

Dick Mertens wrote back that it is a great article!   Phil thinks it applies to all parties these days.  

so now we have all these cute little things to use up;  Rachel can use them at the pool 

watched the youtube about the vegan twin study; found out it was a hit on netflix in a longer form 

I wondered to myself if Dr Fagan when pondering our request and reviewing info about Va considered also my request for an MRI to investigate my persistent headache problem.  Most likely a little bit.  But I have no idea how doctors think about things.  

Read a little bit in Sleepwalking when the pianists were playing.  A shocking scene where the boy is raped by some dancing old women.  Tuahir later explained it as some ritual that had been interrupted and so made up for; he comforted the boy.  

different take

post on bluesky this morning:  66 Fairy Tales written by 40 different authors in three different languages, on three different continents, over approximately 1600 years.  The Bible.  Well, ok, if you put it that way . . . . .   in a class with the tag I saw in The Guardian a few years back "monastic religion headed by a prince in vatican city, Italy

talked with Doug, nothing specific yet; speare would send her on to a rehab hospital/center; she hopes she can do it here at speare rehab here

Monday 31 August  

Spoke with Richard Dannenbaum earlier today.  505-697-9471  Juan and team will do the hvac work on Thursday of this week.  They will also file with PNM for electric board upgrade; that has to be approved.  

Victoria texted to say hello.  I texted Lisa but no reply yet from her.  

Good walk for Bela at Walmart today; up to prescriptions and back with stops at customer service.  Swim tomorrow.  Philips' office called this morning to have us get a "rush" appointment with cardiology at Speare next week.  

   

Tuahir

the old man in Sleepwalking Land.  He says to Muidinga on p 65:  "Never trust a man who doesn't know how to lie."  A hyena then lies down next to them, most uncharacteristic behavior.

Moresco, I thought earlier, noticing my painting in the bedroom, of course, he is the Giorgio Morandi of post-Post Modernist Italian literature.  Is there a new slogan for his work?  wiki gives him this line "Defined as one of the founding fathers of a new line of Italian literature that moves beyond post-modernity, and then mentions DeLillo and Pynchon but no clear slogan.  

I listened to theta waves sleeping chimes with my earphones about 3 am this morning and enjoyed that, went back to sleep, up and down, through at least two selections.  

Bela ready to order a custom house at the Fairgrounds road colony called Mountain View, for down the line in the future perhaps.  Earlier morning coffee thoughts.  

Muidinga is 11, lost his memory.  The notebooks they found in the burned bus were written by Kindzu, who died in the wars.  Survival in devastation, words, names, on pages, carved into the bark of trees.  Divorce is a kind of micro civil war, the slow dying out of earlier passionate "mutual enthusiasm" ( Handke's phrase).  

Having the cruise on the horizon is a great distracting project; anticipation, preparation, packing, imagining.  Something to shift the mind onto away from the new sadness, the news we were most likely the last to have been apprised of, even as we could sense the tectonic under rumblings much longer ago than we wanted to feel.  

"that miraculous hairclip of hers . . .was the cat's paw."  154 Beginnings

Friday the 28th of August

Wonderful movie last night, Jeanne duBarry.  Great rendition of life at Versaille under Louis XV, touching love story, study of class and wealth, rigidity and play.  The age.  

Chapter 8 featured the wrapping, unwrapping, care of, and rewrapping the circumcised penis of our narrator.  Some fish were smacked against the floor and then gutted and a poor cat similarly killed to get a souvenir cat's paw talisman.  The other characters ambled about the villa and park; the wedding dress being readied for the coming wedding.

Bela deep into another novel by the Spanish writer, Duenas. 

Crazy mind continues to speculate wildly about the separation-divorce; theories abound; ignored emotions come up with yarns and scenarios and flashbacks and entwined narrative arcs and threads.  The spaghetti of drama heard from a long tunnel or viewed through a periscope, a telescope.  Can understand Versaille better than our own family.  Thank you history and art.  Life itself that tsunami river wave crashing down from the mountains in Nepal wiping out everyone and everything.  

Sky did a terrific job repairing the toilet and then sat and talked with us for a while.  Wonderful guy.  His parents live out in Bridgewater, they came here as hippies (boomers).  Blakeley D grew up in DC, St Albans prep (National Cathedral), UPenn and Harvard architecture.  Sky's oldest, Wyeth, has gotten big into sailing this summer, day camp at Lake Winnepesaukee. 

End of summer week, everything happens.  Kim sent a market analysis of homes comparable to ours; prices have flattened and some dropped slightly.  

Would I want David to come back in a year or two and join Sky in his plumbing business?  

Got a proposal from TLC to work on Casa Alegre.  Will call them on Monday to talk with the sale person, Richard Dannenbaum.  Had never seen a document come on pandadoc and thought at first it was spam!!

Might be best to go back to one book at a time.  Finish Sleepwalking Land first?  Or go back and forth?

They move at such different paces.   

mid week

watched Bela's PT session with Joel.  Set up three more appointments with him.  Beautiful day now.  Time for after lunch nap.  FIP has been playing lots of Dolly Parton in honor of her, she died yesterday of cancer at 80 in Nashville.  

Apple Maps just drove down our street.  Dick sent a piece about translating the Odyssey.  C&K have invited us to meet them for dinner this weekend.  

Our narrator has just clipped off his pubic hairs with scissors, standing in the moonlight at his window.  Next chapter titled "Circumcision."  Time to nap.  

Thursday

Echocardiogram went well.  Bad news from ABQ last evening.  TLC, Juan, says our HVAC is shot; ordering a whole new system, will have it put next to the house not on the roof.  Next few weeks.  Juan says just after covid, (we bought in 2021, May, or '22) many installations were "frankenmonsters," pieces they could find and cobble together but which did not fit the job's needs or each other.  

day off news

 started with a headache and drove west to Lebanon.  The Magic burrito place was not yet open and after looking in through the window I decided I didn't want to eat there after all.  Walked back around the square to see what the Big News painted on the gas station cafe window was about.  They had moved early in the summer to 1 Court Street.  I walked along and looked up that address to find that I had walked right past that number but had seen nothing new there then realized it must be one of those doorways on the other side of the big set of brick buildings, the side facing the back parking lot.  Just then over in the common I saw Sarah and Don getting out of their car.  They headed across the street and on the sidewalk in front of the courthouse where the big busses stop we chatted for twenty minutes.  Sarah was going in to the town clerk to pay bills on their new house in Lebanon.  The washer and dryer were full of gunk of some mysterious sorts so they were waiting for delivery of new ones.  They still think of the Ashland road house as the real house, primary home, and this Lebanon one as another place to use as needed or wanted.  Ginger, Don's daughter, is going through a divorce.  My ears took note of that but luckily I blurted out nothing.  You first agree on which house will be the base for raising the kids in a secure location; they you divide up duties involved in organizing the house and getting the kids to all their activities including school.  Wonder if this is what will soon be happening in Paris, some for of it.  

Had a sandwich at the Coop and drove home.  Fage yogurt at Walmart here is $3 cheaper than at the Coop, so there goes the myth that the coop is cheaper.  Bought those Norwegian crackers---our resident mice got into two packs that I had foolishly left out on the stove last night.  

Into the two books.  Moresco's opening title and line I love so much:  From Sleep to Silence, From Silence to Sleep I, on the other hand, found myself at ease in that silence.  In medias res, bam!  love that "on the other hand."  How far we are from "stately, plump Buck Mulligan."  Couto's opens with "War had killed the road thereabouts."  mmm sounds a note, with "thereabouts" the touch.  

If you drink a lot of water in a short period, you may move from mild overhydration to what's known as water toxicity, intoxication, or water poisoning. This happens when there's too much water in the cells (including brain cells), causing them to swell. When the cells in the brain swell, they cause pressure in the brain. You may start experiencing things such as confusion, drowsiness, and headaches.

Brain Pressure: Brain cells swell and grow larger. This extra pressure pushes against the hard bone of your skull, causing a throbbing headache

If you’re properly hydrated, your pee will be light yellow, like the color of light straw or lemonade. You may be drinking too much water if your pee is colorless or clear.

Bela had a good day of swimming.  She mentioned early that she's worried about David and Cécile and I agreed we both are.  She wonders if they had not been getting along for much longer than we realized.  I do think that is the case. 

We saw two videos on YouTube showing the tenders at L'Spezia; looks easy enough to use.  Also videos of the staterooms on Legend of the Seas.  None of course of the accessible cabins.  

Phone call from the TLC hvac tech in Abq.  Power outage notice canceled his visit to the house.  Esteban will go tomorrow or Friday to check on things.  Fingers crossed nothing serious. 

Return to Walmart

 how long has it been since we have not walked at walmart?  Went today at Bela's insistence.  She was fine, walked to the customer service.  I circumambulated the store, first in weeks as well.  Why a headache all day?  all day!  stronger now than earlier, frontal lobe.  cookies aggravate it, or was it the slices of cheese I took about an hour ago?  Just took third advil of the day.  Had a big salad with asian noodles for lunch.  Too much Skippy peanut butter on bread in the last three days?  Palm oil, corn sweetners?  Ora protein powder drinks over past two days?  Cacao?  Chocolate?  feel like I've drunk lots of water today.  

Eating a bowl of blueberries now.  Relieved Bela walked so well at walmart.  Not interested in walking around the house on her cane, however.  Not sure why.  Long sleeps in the afternoon after lunch and before GH for both of us.  She swims tomorrow.  Might ask Rachel to take her to pt again on Weds so I can drive the loaner car back over.  

starting into Sleepwalking the Land by Mia Couto   title could be one of Handke's  

Sebald on Handke

such magnificent essays   in Silent Catastrophes  

And in allowing the particular light

which filters through the leaves of the canopy

or the canvas of a tent to shine through from time to time

between the words placed with often astonishing care and precision,

Handke, in Die Wiederholung,  succeeds in making the text itself a place of refuge

among the arid zones which, even in the culture industry, are encroaching further by the day.

The book of a journey on foot through the Karst landscape . . . islands of calm . . . in whose depths

. . .  the beasts of the Karst could assemble . . . . 

Inscribed into this image of a peaceable kingdom, reminiscent of the Ark, is the hope that,

despite the unfavourable circumstances, some small part of our natural Heimat may yet be saved after all.

In Handke's work, teaching and learning are ways of preserving the world. 

I can think of no more beautiful image . . . than this page of Repetition dedicated to the road mender and sign painter.  

Seen in this light, the journey on foot becomes a kind of Pilgrim's Progress, and the stages along the way those of an imagined history of salvation.  The decisive factor . . . is the act of walking itself: 'Set out on the road to one goal or another, whether actually or merely in thought: between the goal and the intention there is something that contains both, namely the act, the progression.  This progression is as good as the goal:  for this will certainly be reached, if the decision is firm and the conditions adequate; and yet this progression can only ever be called intentional, because the walker can always just as easily be paralysed before the last step as before the first."   from Goethe's Color Theory 

This progression is what Handke calls the continuum, in his later books.  

They are the incidental results of the hope for redemption from the guilt-ridden conditions of life, a hope fleetingly realized in art, in the creation of images which allow author and reader to enter almost bodily into the nature of all things, which yet remains forever strange to us.  

----

I'm glad a read some of Stifter so I could enjoy the more the essay on Stifter and Handke.  I plan to read The Castle in our week on the cruise ship and when we get back I can then read Sebald's essay on that book.