Michael Bogdanffy-Kriegh

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March 23, 2019

March 23, 2019 051 Beacon, NY

March 23, 2019 020 Beacon, NY

March 23, 2019 017 Beacon, NY

8:37 AM - Ella’s Bellas
Weight: 221.6 lbs

The Muller report has been delivered. AG Barr has it. AG Barr is preparing a summary for Congress. AG Barr was installed by Trump. Is it reasonable to assume he will mitigate the implications of the report? There is lots of speculation about lots of smoking guns but the liberal news media appears to be in a state of denial, hedging its bets, saying it isn’t over, pointing to this or that investigation, by congress, by district prosecutors, who knows. We hope something will take him down…I am expecting to be disappointed...I wondered to H the other day whether the country was in a state of decay. It seems like it to me...All dharma is dreams I have read. It’s like water flowing through the fingers. You can’t grasp it. There is nothing to hold onto...BL tells me he believes in facts, reason, scientific meth...Kelly Anne Conway made the most important statement during Trump’s campaign, facts don’t matter, what people believe matters...Facts are: a piece of information about circumstances that exist or events that have occurred...We are not in possession of anything but second hand (at best) knowledge of most of the facts we use to construct our beliefs about what is going on. We are almost always relying on someone else’s observation and interpretation and we have to believe them or not. Is there such a thing as an unbiased presenter of facts?

March 22, 2019

March 22, 2019 012 Beacon, NY

March 22, 2019 014 Beacon, NY

7:08 AM - Bigmouth Coffee Roasters
Weight: 223.8 lbs
BP: 119/71 HR: 66 bpm

The scale, my body, mock me. I struggle to believe I went off the rails so badly. What takes me weeks to get rid of has come back in just days. The only comforting thought is that I had two good weight lifting workouts this week. Maybe some of this is fat exchanged for muscle mass...It appears that a napkin I left on the side table beside the leather couch is still there. I left it there yesterday morning. How is it still here?...It is cold in here. I consider asking the barista to turn up the heat. I don’t...Who’s Sorry Now, Connie Francis playing in the background. I guess that it is music from the 50’s to 60’s. Google tells me the recording was released in 1958, three years after I was born, and written in 1928, the year my father was born...Schoolmarm-librarian-woman has arrived. She is tightly composed, hair in a bun, clothing understated but elegant, assembled. She looks in my direction. I can’t tell if her eyes meet mine. I have my reading glasses on, I am short sighted. She walks towards me then turns to the water station and fills a glass with water, drinks it, sets the glass in the bus tray, returns to the front, receives her beverage, pays for it, walks out the door...My doctor’s office calls to cancel my appointment. The doctor had an emergency. I schedule for later in the day. I wonder what sort of emergency. If it is a personal one, how can she come into work? Will she be able to focus?...E. M. Cioran tells me reality is a creation of my excesses, my disproportions, my derangements. Lojong suggests that I regard all dharma as dreams. They are saying the same thing it seems to me. One from a Western perspective, the other from an Eastern perspective. EMC tells me ennui is both the disease and the road to recovery. What am I, an angsty teenager again? I think he may be off the mark there. I do things repetitively, ritualistically. I don’t get bored. I remain interested, sometimes excited. Some people might call that boring. I don’t. I don’t need enervation.

March 21, 2019

March 21, 2019 008 Beacon, NY

March 21, 2019 003 Beacon, NY

7:23 AM - Bigmouth Coffee Roasters

I am annoyed. I quit my photo drive early to claim my favorite table in the back. The Jehovah’s Witnesses have claimed it already. We are in a territorial battle lately. They like the table. I like the table. In my annoyance I wonder why anyone believes in any god. Belief causes more trouble among humans than it is worth, or so it seems to me.

5:44 AM - My Studio
Weight: 223 lbs

My weight comes down again, slowly...Gregorian Chants playing through the headphones. I find them soothing...I am looking at a photo collage. Close up shots of nostrils stitched over the top of the heads of two women. I read them as clitoral, then anal, until their nostril nature makes itself clear. The final interpretation is correct. The title is Nase. The artist, Annegret Soltau, is German. I like the work. The artist writes that her subject is mostly herself because she can go further that way, by which I assume she means that she can ask herself to do things, expose things, that might be problematic to ask another to do...I am getting used to mornings free of the Augie pill schedule...An interesting article on the NPR feed about statistical significance. There is a movement among statisticians and scientists to ban the term. The main issue seems to be that it is used to decide what gets published and the willingness of researchers to manipulate results to achieve statistical significance in order to be published. There is also the idea that research isn’t useless just because it discovered results that were not statistically significant...So, is lying and cheating an adaptive benefit? It might be tempting to think that Market Capitalism leads researchers astray, leads us all astray, but I think any system becomes corrupted by the willingness of humans to steal, lie and cheat to gain advantage.

March 20, 2019

March 20, 2019 026 Beacon, NY

March 20, 2019 012 Beacon, NY

March 20, 2019 011 Beacon, NY

8:19 AM - Ella’s Bellas
Weight: 223.04

Danny Boy is still playing in my head, Mormon Tabernacle version. Enveloping sadness. Not as bad as yesterday or the day before, but still there. Chas acts differently. It is hard to know if he feels loss or the change in configuration of the pack. Maybe both?...A funny thing happens when I look up over my glasses at customers at the counter. They are shortened into midgets. Focal point split. Everyone looses stature in the middle...The barista has forgotten my roll. I remind her. She brings it out, browner and crisper than usual, but not burned. She asks if I want another. “I’m good,” I tell her. “You wouldn’t lie to me?” She asks. “No,” I say...Free Solo is playing at the new movie theater across the street. H watched it a while ago. I watched some of it with her. Young dude becomes first to climb the face of El Capitan without ropes. I understand compulsion, but what is the use of his climb to anyone but himself? But then again, what is the use of making photographs and writing to anyone but myself? I suppose we all need Supermen, or in this case Spidermen, to remind us the extraordinary is possible. And then I think, the true hero makes the journey unattended. Am I hoping I am a true hero?

March 19, 2019

March 19, 2019 025 Beacon, NY

March 19, 2019 005 Beacon, NY

8:05 AM - Bigmouth Coffee Roasters
Weight: 224 lbs

Just a few days ago I was at 220.2 lbs. Then Augie got sick. Then Augie died. Then we had friends for St. Patrick’s Day corned beef. I drank on all these occasions. To cope. To be sociable...A long walk by the river this morning. Almost 10K steps. It will be a high step count day. I will go to the gym too...H and I dinned alone last night. More grieving. The Celtic Ladies version of Danny Boy. Augie remembrances. Tears. Dogs have died before. This one seems different. We didn’t help. It happened fast. Faster than we expected. We don’t think he suffered much. He was a happy enough dog a few days before...I think about approaching the event horizon myself. Tomorrow can’t be taken for granted. I am trying to be grateful for each day. I am trying to be grateful for what there is...This week’s Lojong teaching advises against holding onto anything. I will try not to.

March 18, 2019

March 18, 2019 046 Beacon, NY

March 18, 2019 043 Beacon, NY

March 18, 2019 030 Beacon, NY

No words.