Diary

Finished Volume 1 of Cao Xueqin’s RED CHAMBER DREAM in a great translation by David Hawkes. An explicitly realist corrective to feudal romance, this volume keeps the fantasy to the bare minimum, so there’s only reincarnation, underworld bureaucrats, magic mirrors, ghost sex, and demonic possession.

My feet and legs are destroyed from marching the picket line this morning and afternoon.

And something’s jumping around and babbling in the doorjamb of the psyche’s inner chamber…

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PROTESTERS RESUME DEMONSTRATIONS AFTER MASS ARRESTS; SUDENTS AT MORE UNIVERSITIES ANNOUNCE SOLIDARITY RALLIES AFTER 108 PRO-PALESTINIAN ACTIVISTS ARE ARRESTED AT COLUMBIA.

There we have it: the blatant crushing of political expression in the obvious name of anti-Palestinian policy. If they will move like this on the Palestine question, what’s to stop them from doing the same with other political questions? The canary in the cage in the coalmine has just expired, and it seems most of the writers around me believe they can simply hold their breath as a solution.

Read in German: the opening lines of Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory (ugh), writing down vocabulary words on a bookmark.

Time to get serious about learning new languages (again). Daily translation exercises, 20-30 lines, Spanish and German, from exercise books, philosophy, fiction.

I can never remember these deutsche pronouns…

THE FIRST OMEN (Dir. Arkasha Stevenson 2024): a pleasant surprise, I had to look away a few times; nothin’ like external womb body horror to put a spring in one’s step.

Got a lil’ possessed over the weekend, and punched out 7k words for a draft across 48 hours, felt calm, even enjoyed it, rollicking on coffee and green tobacco.

Months of preparation before the strike.

Spring is here!