August 1
Successful draw for K Dopp. Another cool and lovely morning. Anniversary for our lovebirds and birdies, now in NJ and NYC.
note about his birthday party from Nicholas—-
Dear Bob,
We are not at that level yet (nor was that the intention - my introverted self could not cope)! So far, Andrei is signed up (and partner), Pavel (if they allow him out of Russia/into France if he brings his partner that would be the first time the alternate partners would have met! Can we cope with the drama?). Margaret & Robert (from Durham - Margaret Principal of a college, Robert the Professor of Christian Ethics), Dima & Dasha (Dima is a distinguished Russian poet & translator and Dasha a sociologist and both resident in Paris), Jessica (former award winning publisher, practitioner of Tai Chi, collector of icons), Harry & Eli (Harry works with me, and their two children are my latest godchildren), Stacie & Misha (American and Russian respectively and parents to two more godchildren - Polina and Sofi). I have asked one or two others and am waiting to hear - and may conjure up others in due course. This was my first pass. Hope you will reconsider!
P.S. I have met Gary Lachman - we had lunch in London - though I have not invited him to my party!
Love, Nicholas
—-
yesterday a super fine day off. Read lots of Musil and tore out a number of pages which had a phrase or two that I wanted to put down here. Bought upscale earphones at Target, the young salesman walking me to the front of the store after retrieving them from lock and key in the backroom. I wowed him with tales of how even shampoos are under lock and key in cities in the West! These ear phones are superb, noise-canceling and of high quality sound reproduction, so they work perfectly to enable sitting in coffee shops and cafes. Spent most of the afternoon in the cafe at Market Basket (swallowing all my pride about not contributing that "cult.") Breakfast took place at Tuckerbox, the mediterranean breakfast Va likes so much. After I
ordered the rice pudding the waiter started up a chat. Even sat down at the table so he could explain why he loved restaurant work and what he does in his spare time. Has a music studio at his place in Lyme. Guitar and keyboard. His group is now called June Sexton, he is Jamie Sexton. Grew up in Canaan, his dad a woodworker. 34 now not the 27 I guessed. Loves sports, basketball, baseball, and podcasts and wants to create a podcast of some sort. Music and sports. Love working in the restaurant. He asked my first name and I remembered to tell him to look up Cobra Fantastic on Youtube after he told me his group was there and had just released a new album. He's been on some radio show in Concord. If I see him next week, have to tell him to check out Dave's show at the Loading Dock on August 19.
Most remarkable to have a surprise chat with a real person! these days,
covid, vaccinations, etc. Surgeon Casey wants to talk with me over the phone on Aug 24 about my request via printout of WaPo article about a new way to do colonoscopy prep. And my complaint that he didn't discuss being 78 and not worrying about the whole thing anymore. Me being the grumpy geezer? Perhaps.
Now liking Monk's bio. Everyone, including Nicholas, feels it to be one of the finest. Glad we decided to not allow the small film company to use the house to make their movie.
Ready to wrap up Musil too. Dr Friedenthal is showing Clarisse around the mental hospital in Vienna, outside of it. "Hell is not interesting, it is terrifying." Musil 1070 Blame Dante for making hell peopled with interesting people rather than the insane, the poor and the ill.
from Pat this morning Sat 6 Aug
If a person listens to an audio recording of a book, can it be said that the person has read the book?
Pat
This is a question for Jim and other high theologians within the reading community, communities! Probably would need a decree from
the pope himself to settle the issue for all time!!
I joke but it is indeed a burning question on reader reply sites like Goodreads! Why do you ask and what is the larger context of
the question?
Being a bookish dinosaur I would of course say No. Not quite. Not in the centuries old traditions of what reading is, was, and always will be!
Intrigued to know more!
B
John sent this piece from the Times—-here is the final paragraph—-I didn't read the rest—-
"Smart piece, I think. It's more or less the perspective I've been trying to convey to students in Sustainability courses, though of course more pressing concerns (im)press more…"
To be alive at such a time is both an exceptional opportunity and a profound responsibility: We can be pivotal in steering the future onto a better trajectory. There’s no better time for a movement to stand up, not just for our generation or even our children’s generation, but for all the generations yet to come.
William MacAskill is a professor of philosophy at Oxford University and the author of the forthcoming book “What We Owe the Future,” from which this essay has been adapted.
—-
Ken sent a very funny reply to this—-have to paste it in from messages if possible—"Longtermism: What does he know? He’s a philosophy professor. Kidding aside, an argument not unlike “do this for your children and grand children”, only he jumps ahead a hundred generations. Also, my car told me just yesterday that a takeover by AI is unlikely." to which I replied—You know what I had the same, similar reaction and only read the final 2 paragraphs!!! what does an oxford prof know that I want to listen to?? Agree deeply with your AI guy!"
10 August Wednesday
Changed the hoses on the upstairs washer!!!! Cold now going into Cold input, Hot into Hot!!! testing the machine right now. 1:36
Heat wave ended late yesterday. Kids arrived about 9:30. Great talk with Cécile this morning at the breakfast table. Emma and Eliot both grew a foot in the two weeks down in NY and Philly and the seashore.
They got into watching Friends so we saw two episodes last night. Much more fun than the Family thing they had been watching. They are shooting hoops outside now. Mugging over building to rain but not nearly as hot. No ac on.
oh dear, have I been one of these all my life??
"he was one of those well-meaning ramblers who free-associate from the solemn to the trite without noticing the difference.
prof august lindner agee/musil 247
letter I wrote last night—-should I send it or not?? reading Wittenstein
and how he spent the year in Norway —- now I can see Lax more clearly—
and Pessoa—-same patterns as creative hermits —-
10 August 2022
14 Rogers Street
Plymouth, NH 03264
—robert.garlitz@gmail.com
—603-348-5335
Hannah McLane, MD
soundmindproject.org
soundmindinstitute
449 S 51st Street
Philadelphia, PA 19143-1668
Dear Hannah
You are here in Plymouth today and I thought I might be able to see you for a few moments but looks like that will not happen and perhaps a note is better any way. It is amazing to see how you have created the Sound Mind Institute. The work you have focused upon is especially interesting and even moving to me, both by its nature and because it is located in Philadelphia. A place I hold in special memory for lots of reasons.
Fifty-eight years ago I was a college sophomore in Philadelphia, 1964-65. I had a nervous breakdown. They put me on anti-depressants and tranquilizers; these made me feel even worse. They put me into Eugenia Memorial Hospital, once in November and again in March, 1964-65. I transferred that summer to the University of Maryland. Your project looks so promising and hopeful. It feels encouraging to see you doing such magnificent work. I admire what you're doing and I'm gratified to see you having such success with it. The greatest living American artist is there in Philadelphia, Tim McFarlane. Check out his work. I bought two of his paintings last year. TimMcFarlane.com. Bridgette Mayer Gallery.
all best wishes,
——-
Explaining his resignation from the Hollywood chapter of the Friars Club:] “I do not care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members.” Groucho Marx, Quoted in Look Magazine, March 28, 1950.--
—-
evening of Rumney Old Home Day, Sat August 13. Fun watching our photos on the tv screen after Dave found/showed how to use Airplay. Easy as strawberry rhubarb pie they bought earlier today. Very successful gig for his trio last evening at the Cover Bridge. We also saw all their slides of their trip so far—-Philly and NY. The Summit looks more interesting than any ordinary high tower observation deck.
chanced upon Hollinghurst's review of Halloran—-saves me thinking of skimming it.
"he pays specific homage to Swann’s recognition that in his love of Odette he has wasted years of his life on a woman “qui n’était pas mon genre.” Throughout all these novels, certain motifs, such as the noise of his parents sleeping in the silent house or his return late at night to his wakeful but unquestioning father, will recur, as touchstones of value or entry points of memory, in a loosely Proustian way. The little local repetitions, across all the books, of ideas, phrases, situations, serve to emphasize the inescapable narrowness of the world described and at the same time invest it with a faint poetic resonance. This, surely, is Holleran’s overarching purpose: to transcend the starved circumstances of a life with a closeness and steadiness of attention, in a structure larger than any one book, and with a force that accumulates even as the life itself diminishes.
Such a vision is a kind of transfigured masochism, quick to find beauty and relief in the experience of pain. In the final Christmastime chapter of The Kingdom of Sand, the narrator describes the ritual late- evening visit to Walgreens that will yield up the only human contact of the day, and the remote erotic frisson of a possible exchange with the pharmacist or the tall, skinny boy at the checkout:
To be the only customer in the store, just the cashier, the pharmacist, and me, alone with the sunglasses and vitamin pills and greeting cards and candy bars and toothpaste and shampoo, if only for fifteen minutes, would be the perfect Christmas Eve.
And he comes back to his highly personal idea of why spending Christmas alone in a small town would be “so erotic”: “Surely I’d experience a degree of despair, loneliness, and self-loathing unsurpassed at any other time.” Whether or not you hear in this ecstasy of self-abasement a note of far-off humor, the laying bare of personal truth inspires both admiration and pity."
——-Could add a Phil-like comment—-just because a guy writes at length about stuff doesn't mean it is valuable for anyone else to read it. Let alone call it literature or even aspirant lit.
Emma hard at work on a stop-action video.
——
Yamamoto: Breathing. Breathing is very important.
When I first came to California a young man came to me for guidance. He believed he had read a great deal of Zen literature. He even believed he was ready to become a master himself. I told him that first he must breathe.
For a while he didn’t understand, even though I sat him in a corner, and showed him proper zazen posture. He protested the simplicity of my lesson, but it is forbidden for a student to challenge his master. A few weeks later, he came up to me as I was leaving our swimming pool. He said: “Master Yamamoto. Why do you leave me sitting in the corner for weeks? Breathing is not so interesting. You do not understand. I am a scholar!”
He was a proud young man. So I grabbed him by the neck and shoved his face into the swimming pool. I held it there and counted to 200. He did not resist. When I released him his face was quite blue. When he regained his breath, he bowed, and left without a word.
He had learned breathing, the highest lesson.
——-
Thinking this morning about my short trip to San Francisco lost to memory. It was the summer after the summer of love. I think. It must have taken place after the first summer quarter at Chicago and before the fll quarter when I might have not had a place to live? But that can't be right. I lived in I House, so my room there would have been continuous. It was in the few weeks in between the two quarters. Last week of August, 1968? I rode out with someone, in a car. Or did I take a bus out? Few days sleeping somewhere and then a ride back to Chicago with some kids who were doing a DriveAway drive back. That part I remember somewhat clearly.
15 August
Gorgeous full moon last night. In Musil Agathe is intrigued by the effect on her of her meeting with Professor Lindner. Musil is allowing his prose to sound the organs and trumpets, quietly of course.
"Everyone has a story they want to be told." This a clever line upon which writers string out the story of Rogue Agent on Apple TV or is it AMC? whatever. the script seems very intelligent, the drama captivating, just like the other one, Surface. String of good movie/shows about psychopathic, sociopathic charismatic rogue bullies, manipulators, con artists, grifters,
a story they want to be told and it is a story they cannot discover or tell themselves. It must come from without and be the story they most want to be told which they did not know about until the right person told it to them.
my explication . . .
this gorgeous weather, hot sunshine overlaid by cool, arctic notes and fragrances, is "prepare your syllabus" weather, so perhaps that is why I want to see what new models Vivobarefoot is offering. Can they even match the perfection of Lems PrimalZen2?
First day of theater camp for the kids. They were nervous, excited and so were the parents. They said the kids ran off and didn't give them a wave or kiss good-bye!!
17 August Weds
Found two Opel Jennings houses, one up on Agate Hill Rd identical to ours with a pool in the back not heated, and a view over the wall of Sandia crest.
It would be just enough of a view to claim to be a view but it would be cut just enough by the walls to be a bit frustrating. Seems I am indulging in a bit of buyers remorse a year after the fact!! Strange. Why do that?
Interesting to find other areas where the developers built, same year too. Hillside above the Target store area on Coors. Our location still preferable, I'll say. Golf Course road area. Price seems to be the same on Zillow. Now.
339. was considerably lower three years ago. in that area. The Agate road house sold for 190 something. Listed on VRBO that's where I found it. I don't like the pool. Would be a pain to take care of and one we'd never really use.
ritual dinner at Unos this evening. kids more tired. parents shopped. now all watching Mystic Pizza.
22 Mike Iontuonno left early this evening to drive back to Brooklyn. He came up for the Friday gig at Loading Dock.
Kids watching Matilda, Dave fixing dinner. Now 8:28 pm. They played pickle ball most of the day. we saw Katrina Dopp at Mid-State.
23 gloomy morning, muggy. Everyone straightening and packing.
24 photos from the kids at Logan. Lobster rolls $39. there. They are having fish and chips at Legal. Earlier Royal Nails. Eliot and I bought Emma new flip flops for $2. at Old Navy. He said he thought it was a strange name for a store.
I canceled the colonoscopy. Difficult to say no to a medical doctor! guilt and all that. almost sinful. Authority. Casey called me to talk things over in response to the texts I had sent him. Said the pills to make the prep easier have been around for a while, not satisfactory, cause terrible cramps for some. Va heard our conversation and agree with me to cancel. 75 was declared six months ago by the gastro authorities to be the new 65 so the recommendations are now yes for 75 to 85 year olds. All my skepticism rallied to produce this decision. Long range will tell.
After left over pizza from Farmhouse last night, the Beet told me what happens when you stop eating cheese. Withdrawal as with any addictive substance: !!! digestion releases casomorphine!! great line. Most of the info drawn from book by Dr Neal Bernard—-
"When people go plant-based, it's often not the idea of giving up meat that proves difficult. It's cheese. There's a reason for that. In a study on food and addiction, Yale researchers found that cheese triggers the same neuroreceptors for pleasure that drugs do since cheese contains casein, a dairy protein that during digestion releases casomorphine, which plays directly on the brain's dopamine receptors. So if you think you're addicted to cheese, you probably are. Like most addictions, this one isn't healthy."
new writer on the horizon —- Mark De Silva. Might shake me out of my notion of going into All of thomas mann. I mean the music critic caught my attention, but what about this guy?
"But I was inspired by people like Tom McCarthy. I also remember reading Javier Marías, who has become for me a very important writer because he’s very discursive, very philosophical. But also his language is very, very literary, and he refers to his work as a mode of literary thinking. In other words, thinking and literature, thinking and scene and sense detail are one thing — not two things. It isn’t pretty language mapped onto thinking, or taking rigorous thinking and finding a way to turn it into literature. It’s trying to do both at the same time. I took great inspiration from Marías, because I saw this guy and thought, Oh, some people do this."
from interview in the millions. who is tom McCarthy?
Willow wrote to PT
DEAR PT,SOME EXTRA CLARIFICATION ON THE VOW TO HONOR IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH. While Dave and his kids were here in our upstairs guest room I used my bedside potty chair so as not to bother them with toilet flushing,etc. I go 3-4 times a night and Bob had to empty the pot each time so we now say that our vows include that the man takes care of his wife's pee, ha That's called real "peevotion".,ha ha.
The kids left today after a wonderful few weeks here in the East visiting all their many friends and Dave playing some fun gigs.
We are planning to celebrate Christmas in February this coming year since they will not be coming back for our usual Christmas time together. They will come during their winter break in February to be with us in Abq which will be great since Cécile and the kids have never really seen the SW. They may even get to the Grand Canyon. I was telling Cécile that one of the main reasons to see the Albuquerque museum is to see our Aunt Bama's photographs. CéCILE SAID SHE DIDN'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT OUR FATHER'S FAMILY AND I didn't know what to tell her or where to send her for more info. Do you have anything written about it or know of sources I can send her to??
I would like to know more myself.
Last text message-The kids are now on the plane. They are all excited about the upcoming school year; Emma in the bilingual school and Eliot in fourth grade all by himself in their neighborhood school. Cécile is in a new school too ;teaching second grade with all different materials. Dave will be back teaching in his music school and in a place they call Rock U. for kids and adults who want to rock out all the old hits.
Enough for now.
How are you doing?? What can they tell you about your back; your knee; your cough,etc...? Bob decided today to not have his scheduled colonoscopy since he is 77 and has no family with colon problems;has had no polops on previous procedures etc.
Hope you and Ray are as well as can be expected.
Much love,
pew
—— final part of De Silva's interview
[Laughs.] It’s like a 140-proof, barrel-strength whiskey. It doesn’t go down easy. In terms of the reading experience, it has to be consumed quite slowly. We’ve gotten used to immediacy and absorption and rapidity. We expect books to just pull us in and run with it. This is a book that you should probably not try to read 100 pages of in a night.
I like literature, and experiences in life, that — rather than cater to our existing intuitions about how life works, or about how literature works — expand our understanding of common sense. I hope a book like mine will strike someone as violating a lot of common sense ideas about literature. I know it will. It violates my common sense about literature, and I wrote it. I had to follow my intuitions to this strange place. I know it’s kind of crazy and unstable and uncomfortable: that’s how I felt writing it. So you could say, in the weird way “memoir fiction” is all the rage now, that’s the way that autobiography figures in mine.
Cousin Jan Garlitz gave me info on the two cancer deaths that I know of in our family, Dad's side.
Dad had malignant melanoma. He died while participating in an experimental program at NIH. NIH did an extensive study of Dad's history and, aside from Dad being a sun-worshiper and getting too much sun without adequate protection, malignant melanoma is documented for many of those in the U.S. Navy who served during WWII in the South Pacific. Dad's ship went into the Nagasaki harbor just days after the bomb was dropped there and while radiation levels were still very high.
Uncle Jim died from bone cancer, although I believe it started as lung or prostate cancer. In his case, it was determined that his work at the B&O railroad was the underlying cause and, of course, smoking cigarettes for years. Uncle Jim started as the person - I forget the correct title - who shoveled coal into the steam engine. I was told that he would come home covered with soot from head to toe. He later became an engineer, but that still involved exposure to the coal as long as the RR used coal-based steam engines.
once again I lost us a day. Turns out today is Saturday and not Sunday. So we "gained" a day.
Must be I got too excited that Mark de Silva answered my query on twitter. He had never heard of Burke. So I can read his new "novel" to see why it is titled Logos and if he is almost as good as Javier Marías. Is Marías really any good??
to Phil
Half-smart is not a bad way to consider all of these people. W caught the eye of B Russell and was a "star" from then on. They later fell out. W was
a charming jerk, maybe autistic, homosexual (that hasn't come up yet in the bio so not sure what that meant for him), very rich, had nothing to
do but be anxious and mainly obsessed. Biographies clearly are works of fiction of a certain sort. And note how that short video concludes
with the walker-narrator assuring us that being an Anglican priest is quite a good thing to do, but hey if you like riding water slides, W would
approve of that too. So would god even if he is now dead. Did W really make a contribution to thought as great as many assume he did??
Time will tell or money will talk. !?
Stock market took a hit yesterday after the fed chair gave a speech. Isn't that the model for everything historical-cultural-human? Why give
him inordinate power for a few days? Why not give it to Kenneth Burke or J P Jones of Gaithersburg? I remember about half-way through
trying to study Burke for the dissertation having this collapse of faith in what I was doing---who cares about this guy? He scribbled and scribbled,
had friends in the city who put his stuff into magazines, are his ideas and thoughts any better than anyone else's? Another reason centuries
ago we paid attention to a pope rather than to the chair of the fed reserve!! Or said we did and refined the degrees of lip service.
Know anyone from Exeter or Brown who is now super achieved, super admired, undoubtedly worthy of a biography?? Where does
that leave us? the "contentedly" quarter-smart?
——
this from Steve Taylor's email newsletter: "To prepare for the trip I re-read a book about Greece, The Colossus of Maroussi, by Henry Miller, which I first read when I was about 20. It’s such a wonderful, spiritual, life-affirming book which powerfully conveys the beauty of the country. Miller had a powerful awakening experience while he was there, in which he felt completely liberated. As he wrote, "Our diseases are our attachments, be they habits, ideologies, ideals, principles, possessions, phobias, gods, cults, religions, what you please...Whatever we cling to, even if it be hope or faith, can be the disease which carries us off. Surrender is absolute: if you cling to even the tiniest crumb you nourish the germ which will devour you." Thinking back, I think that paragraph has influenced me a lot! It could have been the epigram to my last book Extraordinary Awakenings. "
—
final comments by a young writer about his new 720 page novel, Logos
Mark De Silva. Never heard of him. interview on The Millions
might suit my current way of reading---which is---not much, and very
slowly
"[Laughs.] It’s like a 140-proof, barrel-strength whiskey. It doesn’t go down easy. In terms of the reading experience, it has to be consumed quite slowly. We’ve gotten used to immediacy and absorption and rapidity. We expect books to just pull us in and run with it. This is a book that you should probably not try to read 100 pages of in a night.
I like literature, and experiences in life, that — rather than cater to our existing intuitions about how life works, or about how literature works — expand our understanding of common sense. I hope a book like mine will strike someone as violating a lot of common sense ideas about literature. I know it will. It violates my common sense about literature, and I wrote it. I had to follow my intuitions to this strange place. I know it’s kind of crazy and unstable and uncomfortable: that’s how I felt writing it. So you could say, in the weird way “memoir fiction” is all the rage now, that’s the way that autobiography figures in mine.
I looked up his book on Amazon and found it had five star reviews, but then found that, in fact, there were no reviews of this or one of his other supposedly five-star reviews. So it seems to me that he loves his own writing, but virtually no one else does. A description of the plot in Amazon didn't interest me. It came across to me as his singular little outlook on life and my reaction to all such stories/outlook is: "If this is the author's view of the world, that's fine for him, but I couldn't care less about what he thinks of the world."
P
———
just to take the opposite position for the heck and fun of it, and because he replied to my query, I will now read Logos with great, slow care even if it takes me a year, I will assume de Silva is our new Proust, as great as Wittgenstein, as timeless as Tolstoy, as spiritually invigorating as Miller or Mann, and as promising as Thomas Wolfe was, or even Balzac and Hemingway. So there!
5 pm Finished chapter 1 in de Silva. Wow. Magnificent. Will be wholly worth my while. Not since The Recognitions!!?? Will not disappoint.
Better than Marías for sure. First impressions. Stunning.
28 Sunday Photos from Chezet birthday gala for Paul and Zoe, now 18.
30 Aug Tuesday
Text from Jessica this morning. She's dying of cancer. Fourth doctor discovered it. 50 lbs loss. Not eating. Spots on her liver and lungs. More tests. Her brother Andre is coming to see her early next week. She can't contact Cawley, not sure where he is. Austin or Boston.
Va off swimming with Elizabeth. I'm waiting for the Irving furnace check-up fellow. Muggy day ahead. Vegan resolve faltering. Maybe have sushi after all. Phil sent piece that grapes stave off dementia and aging and female vegans have thinner bones and more liable to hip fracture if they fall.
Kids are back in school. Well, technically they go Thursday. Cécile went Monday. At Chezet they had a party for Paul and Zoe, turning 18. Rewrote words to Mama Mia for them.
Barbara called yesterday. Small windfall of $50 grand from Dad's estate. Shares in the grocers' warehouse biz he founded. Figuring out how to divvy it up and keep taxes on it low.
Furnace guy showed, 9:50. Might take off now for the day off.
Panera in W Leb for lunch. Two salads! small chicken sandwich.
Finished The Forgotten Sister which means all of Musil—-for the time being, until I get the last part of vol 2 waiting out in Casa Alegre. Not sure Agee's translation is as good as the other one. later I can compare.
so interesting that paintings of still-lifes figure in the final pages—-resonates with de Silva's novel in some slight way—-painting and drawing.
Now Heavily invested in de Silva!!! three of his huge tomes now on Kindle.
31 August Checked out the ipads and air ipads yesterday at Best Buy in W Lebanon. Conclusions inconclusive.
Winter holiday in France 2023 11 Feb to 26 Feb.
Martha Richards says there are handrails both and up and down the front stairs on her house!! Just for Virginia?? fast work too.
Today rentrée for the kids. Well, tomorrow, Emma goes to middle school
Lycée Camille Sée.
Should I attribute the new chapter to Musil's ending or de Silva's beginning? Either way, that sense of first day of Fall and New Chapter.
