You can read two books at once, one book is the morning book, the other book is the night book. The night book works better if it's narrative, but the morning book can be challenging, it can be dense, even off putting, it can be Thomas Bernhard or a collection of essays. The morning is always cleverer than the evening; I think that's a proverb, and I like it. ... She made a list of funny German names collected during her research. I read it once and cried laughing, cried so hard it was embarrassing, because we were still technically at a funeral. I read it a second time and cried laughing again, at about 90% strength compared to the first time. I did not get a copy of the list from her, and maybe that's for the best, because I wouldn't want to read it too many times, I worry it would lose its strength. I remember a few names off the top of my head, when I think of them on their own I smile; I like that she also finds the name game funny, and I hadn't laughed that hard in months, maybe years. ... I'm starting to realize life is just "hanging in there," punctuated by short interstitial periods where nothing is obviously going wrong, but filled with apprehension because something might start going wrong again soon. ... Every day there is... a new version of Google Chrome. ... Three, no, Four things to never talk about with other people: Pet stories Dream stories Travel stories Drug stories ... There's a luxury apartment building in my neighborhood that has a fantastic art gallery in the lobby. You can see the paintings hanging from the street, but you can't go inside and see them up close. Yesterday I was standing longingly outside the window when the maintenance man happened to come up behind me (Ron). He let me inside for a second (illicitly) so I could write down the names of the artists I liked and take a picture of the drawing I had been looking at. I met the woman who works at the desk (Lorraine). I left feeling like it was the best thing that had happened to me all week. ... Standing outside the Vatican I wrote: "Each day, I would rather confront aimlessness than imprisonment. This statement encapsulates my entire relationship to work, and collective social and professional life." ... Today hiked to the crater of Mount Etna. First and possibly last time on a volcano. The thing about nature is, for me, the beauty fades as soon as it's not right in front of me. I think there's something about awe in the face of raw experiences of natural beauty that I just don't understand. I feel a little left out because a lot of other people seem to understand it. I would infinitely prefer spending my morning on a good conversation and an espresso in a cafe, I think. maybe I should feel bad writing this given that it's Earth Day? ... She and I always used to get into arguments about this: Do people do what they like, or do they do what they know? I said that people do what they like to do, even when those desires seem perverse or strangely oriented against them or even self-destructive. Sometimes desires are all of the above. Desire does not equal thing that is good for me. She always argued that people do what they know, and it's not always what they like. She said people repeat what they know even when it's bad for them. For me, that's not a fucked-up enough idea to be true. I agree insofar as that people repeat what they know-- I just think they do it because they like it. They like to repeat what's familiar, and when they stop liking it, maybe consciously or at some unconscious level, then they'll change. I think desire always leads the way, whether you know it or not. I respect her way of thinking about the world but there was a lot we didn't see eye to eye on. Even now, I'm writing about her in the past tense. ... There's a difference between living a conventional life and being conventional in spirit. You can lead an unconventional life while spiritually being a total conformist, and you can lead a relatively conventional life while internally being a freak. Both amaze me, in their way. I can think of examples of both kinds of people in my life, as well as people who are more straightforwardly conventional/conventional and unconventional/unconventional. Sometimes it's hard to differentiate between the surface & what's underneath. I prefer people with original attitudes and tastes, or even just a streak of weirdness, even if their lives look relatively bland from the outside. What bothers me most is the veneer of idiosyncrasy with nothing to back it up. Recently I met a couple who I think fit into the conventional life/streak of weirdness category pretty neatly. I liked this conventional couple because they had a weird sense of humor. They had a joke where they would grab each other as if they were furious and ask "Where the FUCK did you sleep last night?" Obviously they shared a two-bedroom apartment together. Apart from how much I enjoyed that joke, we really had nothing in common, but that joke won me over instantly. Where the fuck did you sleep last night. ...