— I’ve been under the weather with the recent version of the plague — feeling as bad as when I had Covid a few years ago. Well enough though to take various books off the shelf and read passages and to read a few novels, too.

— There was a time in my life when I read a lot of Holocaust literature. Albert Speer was of particular interest. The why of it all. I knew it wasn’t possible but I kept reading Gitta Sereny’s book on him to try to figure it out. I was deeply moved by Interrupted Life: The Diaries and Letters of Etty Hillesum and this is one of the books I’ve been lately drawn to. In the preface Eva Hoffman says, “All the writings she left behind were composed in the shadow of the Holocaust, but they resist being read primarily in its dark light. Rather, their abiding interest lies in the light-filled mind that pervades them and in the astonishing internal journey they chart.” I feel as though I’ve been reading this book for a very long time, and it only becomes more profound.

— “But you must continue to take yourself seriously, you must remain your own witness, marking well everything that happens in this world, never shutting your eyes to reality. You must come to grips with these terrible times and try to find answers to the many questions they pose. And perhaps the answers will help not only yourself but also others.” p. 41.

— “And finally: ought we not, from time to time, open ourselves up to cosmic sadness?” p. 96

— “It is a good thing from time to time to feel the emptiness and weariness in yourself for a moment or two, just recall how things used to be and how they are now.” p. 100

— “…each new regulation takes its little place in our century, and I try then to look at it from the viewpoint of a later age.” p. 129

— “My roses are still in bloom….If I should survive and keep saying, “Life is beautiful and meaningful,” then they will have to believe me.” p. 190

— “For I insist that life is beautiful…” Clarice Lispector

— As usual, dipping into Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (I must insist on the Robin Hard translation). “The noblest way to avenge yourself is not to become as they are.”

— “And at the end of nearly everything, poetry, the old rose, by its very avowal, refuses to shut its merlot mouth.” C.D. Wright

— “I submit that pressing the demands of the word forward is pertinent, urgent, a requirement even. The happiness that belongs to all of us has been stolen by the few, declared Rigoberta Menchú. I can’t accept this outcome. I will not.” C.D. Wright

— Now is the time to follow the lights, as C.D. also said, in our own skulls. Keep your language out of the meat grinders that want to make us all sound like we’re in the fifth grade. If people want to write their work reports and their instagram captions and their blog posts with AI, so be it. I will also not be reading those if I can help it. What would be the point?

— “My red and yellow roses are now fully open. While I sat there working in that hell, they quietly went on blossoming. Many say, “How can you still think of flowers!” Last night, walking that long way home through the rain with the blister on my foot, I still made a short detour to seek out a flower stall, and went home with a large bunch of roses. They are just as real as all the misery I witness each day.” Etty Hillesum, p. 188

— What do you want to say with the time you have left? What did you see? Care about? How did you help?

— “A test of what is real is that it is hard and rough. Joys are found in it, not pleasure. What is pleasant belongs to dreams.” Simone Weil

— Keep on considering the opposite. For example, I always believed this from Rumi:
“Whenever you gather with friends or are in a crowd, / try to be the one least in need.
For simply doing that is giving.”
I still believe it though it sure as hell sent me down a few wrong paths and screwed with the depth of my CV.

— The word propinquity, keeps coming up for me. I’m developing a new relationship with my phone which requires me to keep it further away from me. It’s helping. It’s quite a beautiful thing — many have written about this before me. I’ve deleted all the apps except Instagram from my phone. I’ve reinstalled SelfControl on my computer. I’ve stopped railing in my mind about AI because I can’t do a damned thing about it. I agree that it’s unlikely (thanks for the link Kerry) that I’ll be able to post my way out of fascism. I believe in calling the thing the thing.

— Following: Jonathan Haidt, Edward Zitron, Edward Zitron, Rob Spillman. Rethinking my relationship with technology has been very rewarding. Also, Rebecca Solnit, The Weekly List, Katharine Viner’s Saturday Newsletter.

— Thinking about where I focus my energy. Thinking about the power of our imaginations. How do we want to see the future? What future can you imagine? We don’t know what will happen next. Let’s not have someone else dictate what our future will be.

— “My god, how magnificent life is precisely owing to its unforeseeability and to the often so strangely certain steps of our blindness. Life has been created quite truthfully in order to surprise us (where it does not terrify us altogether).” Rilke

— ““To what purpose, then, am I presently using my soul?” Ask yourself this question at every moment.” Marcus Aurelius

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March 2, 2025