2025

● Wednesday, 1-1-2025 (New Year’s Day): I have two reasons for suspending my exercise-walking this morning: the air is very polluted, from all the firecrackers last night and early this morning; and my left thigh is injured, probably from excessive walking. I’ll see how the thigh feels tomorrow.

● Truncated Camarillo drive; refreshing. Traffic was unusually light, which always makes the drive more pleasant, for me.

● Thursday, 1-2-2025: I had no thigh symptoms this morning, so I took my exercise walk. Afterward, I had slight symptoms in the thigh, so I forewent my second walk.

● Friday, 1-3-2025 (10:30 p.m.): I just awoke from another dream in which two arts were fused: music and painting. I was studying the history of American painting, and the paintings were also musical compositions. I was surveying the history of the art, including compositions of Brahms, which led to the works of Beethoven. The dream (as I remember it) was dominated by the graphic images, colorful and beautiful, mostly of landscapes. I was trying to learn to paint. In one scene I was looking at a sketch of a family having a meal, sitting at a round table, and the advice was given to always show such tables with a radial pattern for the tabletop.

● Saturday, 1-4-2025: We may say we’re against political violence on principle. Yet, would we not favor the assassination of Hitler? Which means we’re not against political violence on principle. We’re for or against it depending on the circumstances. Strictly speaking, I’m not for or against anything on principle. All decisions are ad hoc, depending on circumstances. As to certain kinds of actions, though, exceptions may be so rare or far fetched, that I’m for or against them virtually on principle.

● Wednesday, 1-8-2025: I had a deposition scheduled for this morning. I had to cancel it because the fierce winds overnight blew over a tree near my garage, which blocked my way. The city has now removed the tree. Because of the winds, there are several major, devastating fires nearby. I feel fortunate that my apartment (so far) is not in danger. I’ve been fortunate over the years in this way.

● At first blush, I may seem inconsistent to say both that that which is valuable (not intrinsically, but quasi-intrinsically) is just an aspect of consciousness (happiness) but that what I most value is my writing. I’m not inconsistent: the first is my judgment about an objective truth. The second is my subjective, nonrational feeling. One is my philosophy; the other is my feeling.

[Later note (1-17-2025): That’s inaccurate: both are my philosophy—my philosophy of well-being, which I’ve defined as consisting in both an objective element (happiness) and a subjective element (our desires). Our desires are nonrational and arbitrary. Sometimes, as here, philosophy and psychology coincide. And you’d expect that they would: philosophy seeks the truth, and largely treats of man and his life; and the truth about man importantly involves his psychology.]

● Saturday, 1-11-2025: I had an appointment with a physician’s assistant in the orthopedic department at Kaiser this morning, for my left upper arm, which has been painful on certain movements for the last few months. He examined me and opined that it was just a strain, which should resolve on its own. He suggested that I perhaps do light stretching exercises. Since the stretching exercises (doing them too strenuously) I think caused the injury, I’ll wait until this injury resolves before resuming those exercises.

● The horrendous fires in Los Angeles have been burning (and in fact expanding) since last Tuesday. The one in Pacific Palisades is creeping closer to my neighborhood. I’m starting to get very nervous, concerned about that. I’m by no means out of the woods in that regard. If I were religious, I’d pray. (But since I’m not, I won’t.)

● People are calling these fires “apocalyptic,” because of their huge scale: the great number of persons who’ve lost their homes. But however many—or however few—persons lose their homes, it’s catastrophic for them.

● Monday, 1-13-2025: Today in a deposition the deponent (the person being questioned) commented that western civilization is based on Greek philosophy. He didn’t explain that, and I didn’t get a chance to ask him about it; but it occurred to me that that didn’t seem right. Later, this occurred to me: western civilization is not based on philosophy at all—it’s based on greed. . . . Well, less crudely, and more precisely, it’s based on desire: people’s quest to satisfy their various desires . . . and few persons, I suspect, have a desire involving or “based on” Greek philosophy!

● Friday, 1-17-2025: To justify his controversial political actions, Trump construes his decisively winning the presidential election as a mandate. But Trump won because his opponent (Joe Biden) was so unpopular. Probably almost any candidate who ran against Biden would have won. Dissatisfaction with your opponent does not necessarily translate to support for your crackpot ideas.

● I just awoke from a dream. I was in late college or graduate school, and soon to graduate and start a professional career. I was in a quandary over what to study and to choose as my career. I had been studying law, but turned it down as a career because I found it tedious. Instead, I chose the kind of work involved in the last class I happened to take: studying bird biology. In the last scene in the dream, I was meeting with the professor—alone (it was so late in the school year that she was meeting with me specially, not as part of a regularly scheduled class)—and I was explaining to her my decision about this. At one point in my explanation, I was showing her a scene of a hypothetical legal case, a traffic collision. I said something like, “I find it so boring that I couldn’t even remember the color of the sky, and we both, unsuccessfully, tried to remember the color of the sky. Then the scene zoomed in on the cars involved in the massive gridlock/collision. There were many newish luxury cars; one was a new, white Rolls Royce. I think it was somehow a reference to the potential lucrativeness of a legal career, wealth that I somehow missed. But my point was that law was out of the question because I hated the work. This dream came just a few hours after I added a note in this Journal to an entry of 1-26-2001, wherein I express an insight about the difference between humans and lower animals (and which note I thought was especially good). I interpret the study of bird biology as symbolizing my desire to write: when I write, I fly. . . .