I’m back. Relaxing isn’t easy at the best of times, and it’s even harder when you’ve just kicked the dog. These days he likes to wait until you open the door for him, and then, instead of coming in, run off and bark furiously at the passersby, as if he needed your protective presence to do so. You end up standing by the open door like a fool, waiting until His Lordship decides he’s barked enough and deigns to come back. He knows this behavior gets him a kicking, so he scurries inside very quickly and nervously, trying to move faster than the oncoming foot. Sometimes he manages it, but not today.

Recounting this distracted me from my muscles and careful forming of the letters. I can’t let myself get overexcited by telling stories; I need to focus on the real reason for doing these exercises. At least today I managed to relax enough to begin distinguishing between the muscles I should be relaxing and those I shouldn’t.

September 5

I have a good excuse for neglecting these exercises (in their appealing, encouraging, relaxing new incarnation) over the past several days, since I urgently needed to put together a collection of short stories—but now I’m getting distracted from forming the letters properly.

Preparing this collection of stories, I was going to say, was a demanding and even rather torturous process involving selecting the texts, some of which had been lost years ago in envelopes containing other things; making decisions (this one yes, this one no; I prefer this version to that, and so on); tracking down the details of previous publications (if there were any); and photocopying the final version of some texts, etc.; and all within a very tight time frame, something like three days. But now I’m getting distracted from forming the letters again.

I need to pay close attention to my handwriting—and indeed to my hand, bearing in mind which muscles I have to keep tense and which I have to relax. Since it’s impossible to concentrate on everything at once, I need to achieve a kind of oscillating attention, which swings between one thing and the other, until one day, I imagine, my movements (i.e., the regular handwriting and the selective relaxation) will become automatic. In the meantime, I need to practice and practice, and even if I don’t think I’ll manage more than my usual daily page, it at least needs to be every day, without missing any the way I normally do when faced with external obligations that often seem urgent and essential, though of course they hardly ever are. That’s enough for today, but I’ll be back.

September 6