Diary, 11/15 to 11/19/19

Listening to Copland’s third symphony last night I thought, “Copland’s the best!” But the last movement was quite overblown—was it satire or a lapse in taste? Respecting him as I do, I have to say satire. I wish I’d had the thought last night.

Diary, 11/7 to 11/14/19

Reading Frederick Perls: Gestalt Therapy Verbatim, the introductory lectures called “Talk,” and being at first deeply impressed, then somewhat distressed, and finally feeling like he really doesn’t know what he’s talking about. In this book he’s really trying...

Diary, 11/1 to 11/6/19

910 words so far this morning on The New Book. So far it is a “book” of “thinking on paper,” and so far it is thinking about weight loss. Obviously, I don’t intend and could not think about weight loss every day to the tune of a thousand words; it would be nice, but I don’t expect this, if I could “think on paper” each day, thinking about self-mastery, and so get my book written.

Diary, 10/20 to 10/31/19

Watched Big Fish last night and fell in love with it a second time, perhaps again especially because of Alison Lohman. But it is a magical movie done absolutely right. There are too few such movies; The Wizard of Oz comes to mind as a comparison, though Fish is more about relationships and communication than Oz’s outright fantasy. One thing I absolutely hated about Big Fish that would not occur to many people, I think: the hero “falls in love at first sight” and spends three years laboring to find out who she is. This is pathological, yet a commonplace of “romance,” truly terrible behavior made to look supremely attractive, a complete mischaracterization of “true love”...