"he had chosen this apartment in particular

 because it appealed to his poetic powers--which expressed themselves less in creation than in reception."

108 Motley  "there was nothing he loved more in the world . . . to stand at his window on a rainy day and watch as . . . the moisture crept down the old walls."  

I like that notion that poetic powers could best express themselves in reception---there, my whole life understood, described.  When I consider the remainder of the passage and the context in which it is placed I wonder if I am using it, affirming it, adopting it as my motto, somewhat too hastily.  It may not be a sentiment one should take as an ideal, after all.  How can I know?  

Saturday   What if I place that comment about reading with Mia Cuoto's?  

"Books are never written. When we read them, we write them."   Mia Couto

his poetic powers expressed themselves less in creation than in reading--reception  

Sebald's essay on Stifter may help me out here.  Since he wrote and painted might he not be placing reception on the lower rung of estimation.  Could also wait to see how this vaguely creepy story turns out.  The narrator warned us it would be dark---Tourmaline  

today and tomorrow I am trying to do a 24 hour only thing eating only Ora So Lean & So Clean powder protein.  Why?  Who knows.  Some strange "cleansing" impulse, or "fasting" or experimentation to see what happens to the cycle of headaches?  

"It is a dietary supplement designed to boost protein intake, not a complete meal replacement. Each serving provides only around 120 calories and minimal fats and carbohydrates, meaning it lacks the total daily energy, essential fatty acids, and broad spectrum of vitamins and minerals required to sustain human life."  

so indeed this is a fairly stupid notion and where does it spring from?  

Anton Reiser, the German novel, written in 1785-1790    Christian Garlitz shows up in Garrett County, Maryland  1790-1873 Avilton, MD 

In the end we are unable to reconcile the facts, because they, to this date, simply have not been discovered. Therefore we can only reconcile the stories. Thus, for the present, the history presented on this website lists the first Garlitz in the area, the one who came from Prussia, as John Hendrey Garlitz. The Garlitz to whom all the family histories are traced is Hendrey Christian Garlitz or Christian I. The great hunter of folklore is Christian II. And the convert to the Catholic faith and the settler of Avilton, MD, is Christian III.

"same" German cultural mind-sets?  And the point is?  

putting an end to the Ora only thing, having some milk, yogurt and granola 

back to Tourmaline   a tale of the mother who fled, who disappeared, from the girl with the large head who lived in the basement of the abandoned house.  Sense of tales from Poe, slightly.  

so that's it!  the great actor, the professor, the man who fell to his death, the woman who birthed the young girl, the ancient house, everyone "disappears" and none of their lives are told with any meaning.  Very proto-modernist indeed.  Nothing coheres.  The tale is dark in the sense that it is a mystery with no revealing patterns.  Stones hold themselves together, we can carry them in our hands, but in themselves they yield nothing to us that we may want to hear from them.  We live in the landscape of mountains, nature, stones, but we are not of them.  At all.  

our son's dissolving marriage weighs on us in the silence of the house now and we wonder how it will all play out over seas in that other country that we understand and do not understand.  Could his wife not be a character in many types of stories, including one by Stifter?  One by Henry James, for sure.  I talked with him about Henry James in the only short conversation we had about the situation.  I wonder how to help him, what to do, what to say.  We are clarifying bequests in the portfolio that had erroneously been neglected and I am going to re-do the trust and will to clarify David as sole beneficiary.  Ten years ago we had named the grandchildren as well, trying to be caring, but now under these new circumstances it seems better to not try to engage legal structures we cannot comprehend.  So many tv dramas under our belts!  As much as we do not cotton to "Ted Lasso" as entertainment, it had some resonances that we could not help but notice, in this new situation, about the American abroad trying to navigate a different national and cultural reality.