February 9, 2016

Snow for an hour, then no snow, then snow again. The ground where no snow lies on it seems raw and hurt.

Days of almost comical catastrophe, one after the other. One stands, brushes off, prepares for the next blow.  In a dream, or maybe a waking revery, I paused in the journey through a dark labyrinth. My way was lit by a candle I held in my hand. I stood in an open place amid many tunnels, and I decided to turn back, to retrace my steps, to return to the beginning, since it was clear I was never going to find the end. I had no illusion about one way turning out any better than another, but I felt as I retraced my steps a dissipating heaviness, as if each mistake erased lightened me a little. After a while– though still irredeemably lost– I felt younger, the missteps rolling off of me like sloughing hide. I was a bewildered and forlorn boy, which is more romantic, anyway, than being a bewildered and forlorn man.

Psychodrama with Fed Ex, who were trying not to deliver my euros. When I was finally at the station with the apparently undeliverable parcel in my hand, the man explained to me that Fed Ex customer service has nothing to do with actual Fed Ex, and will tell customers all sorts of preposterous things they evidently make up on the spot.

Spotify asks me to try a station they have prepared especially for me. Skeptically I try it, but to my surprise it’s perfect. They really have attended to my preferences. This I hold up as the one triumph of past days.

Good work out, the shoulders far more workable than they were when it was at the worst.