i

I just wrote a post about how we need to stop trying to save the unvaccinated and build their resistance and refusal to save themselves into public health policy. You don’t get to read it, because, in the end, I don’t think it’s worth sharing—you don’t change anyone’s mind by calling them too stupid to live, and while I’ve learned many things over the course of the pandemic, I have not learned how to talk to science deniers. The ones I love, when they go there, I change the subject, because I want to preserve the relationship…

I still want to preserve the relationship. And other things. But I’perm tired of watching small businesses, my children’s education, and my mental health crash and burn because we as a society don’t seem to be able to control a stupid cold virus.

Fitting, really. What, in the end, brings human civilization to its knees two million years after our ancestors domesticated fire—and more than 5000 years after the first written script, 2333 years after the first aquaduct, 1550 years after the longbow, 1000 years after gunpowder, 225 after the smallpox vaccine, 76 years after Hiroshima, 52 years after the moon landing?

A sneeze.

ii

The post before that is about how you should drink less, or maybe not at all. Not going to share that one too, because we’ll talk about that face-to-face, in what I’m afraid will be a relationship-ending conversation… Anyway, here’s a heads up. It’s coming. Another conversation I don’t know how to have, because I don’t like telling people what to do and you don’t like being told to do, but suppose you die because I’ve said nothing?

I’ll talk to you. Soon.

Probably.

iii

Then there’s that post about why I love drag shows and why I love dragging straight people to drag, burlesque and draglesque shows to shake up their worldview, but it seemed to exist only so I could say “dragging people to drag” and didn’t go any deeper, really, so, not gonna transcribe it, publish it.

One of the most important things you learn, I think, as a writer, is that just because you wrote something that doesn’t mean that you should share it.

Food for thought.

Ha.

iv

Before that, a post about the first conversation about the divorce with the kids, coming thirteen months post-divorce. I needed to write it. You don’t need to read it. Although, maybe you do. Some of you do: I know my guilt, my struggle, the things I had to wait for over the past year, they’re not unique to me.

But I also think you probably need to sort all that out for yourself.

My only un-advice: patience.

Patience.

v

A terrible poem about how much I miss Persian tiramisu, but hope it’s very happy in Toronto.

Poetry should never be literal.

I read it again.

Jesus.

It’s even worse than I thought.

Delete.

vi

A post about my trip to Vancouver with Flora and my mom, that echoes my Three Generations post of almost a year ago, but doesn’t really go deeper.

Let it go.

Done.

vii

A “Thank god for rednecks” post that’s actually really, really funny but it was relevant when I wrote it in mid-August, and is relevant no more.

Dammit.

That one, I should have typed up and published as soon as I had written it.

Alas.

viii

Whiny notes from my first solo camping trip that I thought I could turn into a Waldenesque reflection on lessons from the wilderness, but then I decided to drink wine and read Nabokov instead so…

Moving on.

ix

One really terrible poem and one that might actually have soul.

Copying that one into another book.

I don’t know if it will fly but it might crawl.

Maybe walk.

Maybe.

x

Me on Nabokov: “He’s so exquisite, it hurts. And I don’t want more pain right now.”

xi

An attempt to celebrate my mother’s retirement after 50 years of service as an ER nurse.

Impossible to do it justice, right now.

But. Look, there—that line. That’s the beginning of the next draft.

It can be a gift for her 70th birthday.

Yes.

xii

A way too personal post about how much I missed my kids when they went to visit their paternal grandparents for a week. You don’t get to read it—you don’t get to be a voyeur to my pain.

Mine alone.

xiii

“Extreme self-reliance is a trauma response.”

I don’t know. Is it? Maybe it’s just a recognition of the fact that when the shit hits the fan, the one person I can absolutely count on to get me through it all is myself.

Also, is that trauma, really, or is it just life?

I don’t think the word trauma means what you think it means.

The piece is “sharp as a guillotine.”

Also kind of mean.

I don’t think you can handle it.

Also, as I re-read it—I notice it reveals way more about me than I want you to know.

Del…

No. That one line. Can I do something else with that one line?

Save for later.

Click.

xiv

A really sappy account of our last week together. What am I, fifteen?

Apparently.

xv

Attempt to turn a walk with a friend into an urban vignette with a moral.

Fail.

xvi

A lot of introspection and whining.

Fuck, woman. Pull yourself together.

So much evidence in these pages of people who love you and are there for you.

Honor them.

xvii

A pretty good poem.

xviii

A story called “My cokehead lover.”

It’s kind of funny, except it was supposed to be serious.

Can I rewrite it as a comic piece?

Maybe.

xix

Lover, tonight I miss your closed eyelids.

xoxo

Jane

[Review of Morning Page/ Process Notebook, June 9 to September 5, 2021]