April 22, 2008

Glorious morning. I think the moon was in my window last night, but now there is no trace of it.

My sister’s sadness about dad’s wheelchair ramp seems unconquerable. I understand completely. The triumph of Wrong is unsettling no matter how incessant. The odds in favor of mendacity should have worn us down, but they haven’t quite. We rise up to meet the next blow. The Mannings Ridge Nazis have had their way, and expect her to be civil about it, under the doesn’t-even-need-to-be-expressed threat of more difficulties and more sanctions. Meanwhile my father has to sit in the lawn, unable to enter his daughter’s house. People are unaccountable, what they find important, what battles they insist on fighting, what thoughtless things they imagine might be important.

S sends me e-mail, evidently blaming me for the calamity of The Tempest Project. Or so I gathered in the time it took me to read his name and the first line of text. I stopped there and deleted, knowing there would be nothing useful in the message. This is my concession to midnight turbulence: try to avoid reading or hearing things which you know beforehand will be foolish or, by reason of irrationality, unanswerable. But I know the impulse. Find reasons why other people are to blame for your disasters. We all do it. Few of us do it with such self-exposing sincerity as S.