Late in July

Getting up, drinking, writing, having breakfast, talking in a call, sitting on the balcony, reading e-mails, talking in a call again — with Microsoft Teams, eating, drinking, riding a bike, buying, breathing, moving, being moved, cycling again, breathing, lying, standing, tasting, showering, walking, riding, sitting, talking, hearing, seeing, being seen, reading, sleeping.

Write write write.

The Wednesday morning.

Yesterday was Noe’s sixtieth birthday. George had organized a dinner at Ladurée Soho. We sat in the garden.

It is unusual and beautiful to sit at a table with others, eat, drink and talk, talk and listen to each other. On a warm summer evening.

And what does this have to do with me?

You are whom you meet.

To meet others, to appreciate what others say, leaves traces, impressions in me. Even if I don’t remember what was talked about at all. Though. Now comes the memory: Boston, Massachusetts, books, diseases, cigars, wine, burning parental homes, siblings, Nashville, audio books, Audible, champagne, their own children, Stanford, Los Angeles. — Just talking with little bias, among friends.

Writing after returning from Nantucket and after surgery and hospitalization is different than before. Tedious. The words do not come by themselves. I didn’t write for five or six weeks. I probably forgot it, lost the language, lost the language for myself, for ME. I will learn it again, I hope that it comes back, that it appears again, will be back sometime. Now I am closed, clogged.

This morning I see it more relaxed than yesterday.

I don’t want it so much. Maybe I’m too tired to muster energy for my will. Whatever comes, I let it go. Even if what I write is something different than I expect, hope. Even if it is a less immediate writing, if it is a writing “about” things. Doesn’t matter. As long as I realize that writing “about” things is writing in a waiting state. I am inthe waiting room to the ME. Something will open up. Sometime. It’s just that I must write until these three pages are written. Without me, without ME having any idea what kind of letters, what kind of characters I will put on the next pages in the next few minutes. — Again and again, I scroll back in this notebook, let the colors of the writing, the large number of characters pass me by. Without hope that something will open up as a result. But it distracts me from wanting something too much. To want too much that the writing will be back finally. That it will be there as before the interruption by being in the hospital. Being in the hospital because of the intestinal obstruction. They have a name for it: Ileus. The Ileus, that’s me. I myself interrupted the writing. I couldn’t, I didn’t want to write anymore. The ileus transformed me. I have transformed. I became thin, lost a lot of weight. I gained ease. I gained transparency. Transparency for transformation, for development, for unfolding.

I saw colors, was afraid, hardly slept. Still don’t sleep well. Wake up three or four times at night, dream intensely, go to the toilet, fall asleep quickly. Dream again.

What happens when dreaming? Pictures are coming. In the pictures there is speech, and it is heard. There are stories, courses of action, etc. Something happens, there are events. Often the events are repeated. Again, and again. With slight variations. It is as if the dreaming SELF assures itself of the dreamed event. Again, and again.

And at some point, I wake up, I awaken. I wake up, get up, go to the bathroom, sit down on the toilet, pass water. Should I drink less in the evening? Complete my two-liter workload per day earlier, no longer drink half a liter late in the evening?

I am what I drink. And how I drink. And when I drink.

I am what I do and what is done to me.

This is how a person forms oneself

By saying yes, by saying no

By beating, by being beaten

By joining here, by joyning there

This is how a person forms oneself, in which he changes

And this is how his image rises in us

In which he resembles us and by not resembling us.

Bertold Brecht

Formation is more like development, like something that happens, happens naturally. Not so much as something created by a formative will, by a creator, perhaps by a teacher. Not created by one who beats. Not the way the sculptor designs a sculpture. More like how the tree grows.

I am what I read, eat, drink, do. I am also what happens to me. I am also what is done with me, what I let it do to me. What about the tree exactly? Will it be formed? Will it be beaten? The tree is influenced by its environment, by the wind, by the soil. By rain or by the absence of rain. By drought or by the absence of the drought.

I get up, go fore in the kitchen and drink: zero point two liters of tap water, then the same amount of whey. And again, the same amount of tap water, lukewarm. For the first time in my life I drink whey. I feel like I’m doing something for the first time more than in the past. Drink whey, feel, hear the klank in my ears. Consciously taste something.

And keep writing. Don’t think.

Writing writing writing.

Write in red. Soon maybe again in black. In blue. Maybe in green. Without rule. Without limitation of the color scale. I’m going to look for more exotic ink colors. Violet. Turquoise. Dark orange. Brown. Keep writing. Don’t stop. It took nine pages for the black ink to wash out the red one in the fountain pen. Change is slow. It takes time. From the twenty-fourth to the twenty-sixth of July. And change needs a lot of movements by hand. Until black characters became red characters. Continue writing, please, until the end of the following page. Just write on the back of this sheet, write it full of characters, with ink. On and on. What do you feel? What do I feel? Why is it closing itself off today? What will happen until it no longer closes?

Yesterday I read a text of Elizabeth Hardwick. Why does she write? Because she “must”. Is there no will involved? I want, I want, I want to fill these pages. But when I wake up in the morning, get up, put on my thick sweater, and put on the ugly pants, drink a glass of water, stand briefly on the scales, then go to the desk, sit down, open the magazine, pick up the fountain pen — then because I have to. But as soon as I start writing, a will comes into play. And that is the reason, why I close myself off. The unbiased phase of the must ends as soon as I put the fountain pen on the paper. The tree grows because it must. Any will would stop growing. It is not provided. To allow the must again, not to stop it, to hinder it by wanting — that would be it. Then the unbiased writing returned.