My inner artist is very lazy these days, and much as I know that the only way to want to work is to start to work—desire comes from action—my default mode is still inertia and exhaustion. Don’t get me wrong—I’m not just sitting on my couch eating bonbons. I doing all the things that bring me a guaranteed revenue stream. The rent is paid.
But, instead of performing my labours of love, I am sitting on the couch—laying, really—eating bonbons.
Hey, at least I’m not drinking wine—day 11 of no alcohol here, dry January, kittens. It’s not hard exactly, it’s just that tea is an insipid beverage and water is so boring.
By the way, a friend one told me, “Tea is my poison,” and I almost had to terminate the relationship. Tea is nobody’s poison, nobody’s vice. IT’s the liquid equivalent of saying you eat too much kale, especially if you take it black. (Green?)
So, Day 11, no alcohol. I have not replaced it with weed, cigarettes or cocaine, so, you know, kudos to me all around.
Hey, it’s not cocaine.
All that as belaboured exposition to say—as I sit on the couch, not drinking wine and not doing my work, I’m waiting for boredom to set it. I mean, not doing anything is boring. I’m a driven, ambitious person with a high need for stimulation. Surely, any moment now, my inner artist will become so bored, she’ll get off the couch and create?
Problem is… I’m not bored. Not yet. The not doing doesn’t feel bad. It feels awesome. The couch, wine-free though it is (full disclosure, there is always chocolate within reach), is a great place to chill right now.
This may all be part of the process.
Or, I’m totally spent as an artist and I’ve become a regular Monday-to-Friday, nine-to-fiver working schmuck.
I don’t know precisely how things stand in your neck of the woods because of sparkling COVID—by the way, this is the best COVID joke ever, maybe the only good COVID joke:
–but here in Viking Hell (it’s so, so cold) things aren’t great, although, of course, things could always be worse—things could always be worse. My kid who’s graduating from high school this year continues to have crappy, interrupted schooling. The kid who should be in first year post-secondary is working in a restaurant—well, when they’re open. My youngest is starting to think that this is all life has ever been or will be. Me, I’m about to start a second year of 100% remote work, with colleagues who are going into their third year of working in their basements, living rooms, and bedroom corners. It all kinda sucks and we’re the ones who’ve had it pretty easy…
All this is to say, inelegantly, that if you’re frayed and frustrated, irrational and irritable? It’s not without reason. Our reality is really not that awesome at the moment… and this moment has lasted a really, really—really—long time.
Still. With all of that, I see a shift in myself. Like, I actually want to live. This is so exciting folks—for most of 2019, 2020, let’s face it, at least the first half if not more of 2021, it was largely a matter of indifference to me whether I ended a day breathing or not. (And let me tell you, inconveniencing yourself for the sake of protecting others while you’re indifferent to your own survival? Really hard.) I wasn’t actively suicidal—chill, Mom—that would have required more energy than I had. I was just… indifferent.
So the best thing about leaving that space—on most days, I’d really like to be here tomorrow, and what a great feeling that is—is that I’m feeling my ability to feel compassion for other people return. Did you know that’s one of the things that happens? That when you don’t much care about what happens to yourself, you really, really don’t care about what happens to other people, their suffering, their pain… let alone their point of view?
I’m not going to pretend that I’m all sweetness and light, Kumbayah my Lord, let’s all hold hands and love each other (we’re still discouraged from holding hands with strangers anyway). But when you cut me off in traffic (how is there even traffic when we’re not supposed to go anywhere?), say something stupid online, of fail to be competent at the most basic requirements of the job you’re being paid to do… I generally think,
You must be having a hard time right now, nothing’s easy at the moment, hope it gets better for you soon, and until it does… I, at the very least, don’t need to make it worse.
End of 2020, early 2021? When you annoyed me, I wanted you dead.
So hey, progress, right?
Lest you think I’ve gone all Zen and enlightened on you—come on, you know me, that’s never going to happen—I’m still struggling with extending that compassion and understanding to those nearest and dearest to me when they… disappoint me, let’s use that verb, shall we…
We are always more unreasonable and demanding with the people we love, and they with us.
Still. Generally? I want to breathe tomorrow, and so I recognize that it’s hard for you to breathe right now, and I feel for you, even when you’re being a total ass.
Hobbit hole. Baby, it’s cold outside, and the fireplace is roaring. The Giant Beast is sprawled on the couch beside me; the Svelte Beat is roaming the tiny apartment as if it were the Serengeti. I’ve got a cup of Turkish coffee beside me, and a lover tidying up in the bathroom.
I’m writing.
I don’t want to be self-reflecting, though. I realize this as I finish my morning pages, which flow well enough but which read more like a laundry list of the day’s and the week’s tasks than the “brain dump”—or space for self-reflection—that they’re supposed to be.
(A decade later, I’m still not sure if it’s possible to do the morning pages wrong, but if it is, mission accomplished. I think I do them wrong all the time. Still. I do them.)
The lover in the bathroom spent the weekend with me and between that and kids, I missed two days of morning pages since Thursday. So, no more. One missed day makes me feel off. Two missed days make me feel tetchy. Three missed days, and I am unwell.
So, I’m writing.
The people who love me value, encourage, and facilitate this need to write, be it the morning pages, these blog posts, the novels nobody reads or that other stuff.
That helps me stay on the path.
One word, one scene, one post at a time.
ii
I don’t want to be self-reflective and so I’m accidentally preachy.
(Side note: Flora and I debate earlier in the week weather accidental and unintentional are synonyms—I maintain that they are not, she’s not so sure. We also talk about the “Baby, it’s cold outside” lyrics, which she thinks are rapey, and which I think make total sense in the context and time in which they were written, and tell you a hell of a lot of about patriarchy and how fucked up gender roles and expectations still are, and, really, you want to combat rape culture, there are more practical ways of doing it than losing your shit over an American songwriter born in 1910, but hey, I’m old, what do I know.)
I definitely do not wish to be preachy either (man, it’s hard, when you’re in the mood to preach, everything‘s an opening–I am aware of what I did up there, thank you, let’s move on). One, nobody wants to be preached at—except, I suppose the people in church, but, maybe even there, really? They’re already converted: they don’t want to be preached at, just reassured. Preaching, kittens, is not how you change the world.
Two, who da’ fuq am I to tell you what to do?
Fortunately, the preachiness occurs primarily in the morning pages and in drafts of posts I choose not to inflict on anyone else (except for that one, sorry, it slipped through). A moment of unintended self-reflection: if I’m preaching as a way of avoiding self-reflection, should I listen to what I am… Nah. I most definitely do not want to be preached at my myself.
iii
Today, I’m going to take the kids over to my parents for a pierogi-making marathon—assembly line might be a better metaphor—ok, it’s not a metaphor, it is a pierogi making assembly line.
I’m looking forward to it with an intensity that surprises me. Christmas is not the easiest time of year for me, but after last year?
Every holiday ritual, every chance to be with family, is extra precious.
iv
Baby, it’s cold outside, although not as cold as earlier this week. I’m a little bummed that you won’t get to read my panegyric about life in Viking Hell when it freezes over, because there are a few funny lines in there, but, alas, I’ve spoiled that with preachiness too. Still, nothing is wasted, everything is source material: the unpublishable blog post is still practice and process, and maybe I’ll use that turn of phrase elsewhere. Also, that particular cadence—I like it a lot. I’ll play with it some more, make it better.
The important thing is that I’m writing.
v
I’m writing, finally, again, the thing that I want to finish too. It’s not going well yet. I’m rusty and I have a hard time holding the plot line in my head. I don’t remember what seemed so obvious, inevitable ten months ago. But it doesn’t matter. I’m writing. One clunky sentence, one awkward scene at a time.
Novels get written, life gets lived in 15 minute increments.
I always wear my cowboy boots on my business trips to Toronto.
I don’t know whether your neck of the woods has a city that thinks it’s the centre of the universe and disses everyone who’s not from it—probably, eh? And then, the flipside: a city that knows it’s not the centre of the universe and works harder, parties harder … and has a bit of an inferiority complex in regards to the more sophisticated, snotty older sibling? It doesn’t help that that more sophisticated, snotty older sibling glories in putting down the upstart younger one—nevermind that the younger one, maybe, actually has more talent, a better job, a snazzier car and, damn straight, a better quality of life… but still isn’t the parents’ favourite?
That’s Toronto and pretty much every other city in Canada, especially my hometown of Calgary. As a Calgarian who has lived in Warsaw, Rome, Berlin, Paris, London and Montreal—and spent some time in New York, hush, we don’t need to mention my age at the time—I find Toronto’s attitude… cute.
I love visiting, don’t get me wrong. I’ve got fave clubs, restaurants and galleries—there a lots of benefits to being the biggest and having that population density. But when the city puts on its attitude—which it does as soon as you tell it you’re from Calgary—I like to hitch up my skirt, look at my boots, and pay homage to Nancy Sinatra.
ii
I’m in Toronto for six days, three pleasure, three business, although everything gets all mixed up in the end. I’m in town chiefly to visit my beloved and to try to figure out how, or even if, we’re going to navigate this phase of what has never been a typical relationship.
Love in 2021 looks like this, by the way: you leave your cat in the care of a new love while you go visit the one who left the city but not your heart, and nobody thinks it’s weird. Except possibly your parents, so like, let’s not talk about it.
You: You’re blogging about it.
Jane: Totally different. Hush. You’re breaking my flow.
You drive me to the airport at 4:30 a.m., and that’s also 21st century love, isn’t it, anam cara? Moments like this, I do think that we are changing the world, dismantling some of its most cherished assumptions one act of heartfelt kindness, love, desire at a time.
iii
I don’t know that I get any clarity as such during my visit. But I think a lot of things, all of them true.
First—there is no substitute for face-to-face, flesh-to-flesh contact. Professionally, personally, I don’t care: Teams, Zoom, WhatsApp, Telegram, they’re barely methadone. Sit across from me over a cup of coffee for 15 minutes, and we’ll have moved our relationship forward 75 Teams meetings. Kiss my eyes once and it’s worth a thousand texts.
(To clarify, the kiss my eyes comment is personal, not professional. Just in case any of my new co-workers are reading: I am aware there is an HR manual, and it’s pretty clear: no eye kissing in the workplace.)
(Although I do occasionally send “smooches” to my director via text in response to compliments and forgiveness. Maybe I should stop that.)
(Where was I?)
(Here: There’s no substitute for face-to-face, flesh-to-flesh contact.)
Second—Toronto traffic is unadulterated hell. I don’t remember how Dante splits up the circles of hell exactly, but downtown Toronto, in a car? This is where the counterfeiters, hypocrites, grafters, seducers, sorcerers and simoniacs are punished.
And this is during the pandemic.
Third—the view from my Toronto office is to die for.
Fourth—for me to have the sort of life in Toronto that I have in Calgary, I would have to earn four to ten times as much as I do now.
Also, did I mention the traffic?
Him: Alternative–the flight was super cheap.
Fifth—children. Which is really the first and the final, and while one might be in Kelowna right now, and another planning a move to Vancouver, the little has at least six more years of Calgary growing to do, and, yeah, this is why I’m here to visit, and nothing more.
Him: I did mention the flight was super cheap…
Sixth—We’ve never actually spent six days together, 24/7 or as near as, and, fuck, by day three, I need my space back and so does my love, although when I ask him if it’s been too much, too long, he gets angry.
Seventh—I have a fabulous time (mostly) but I miss my kids, my friends, my life—my new love—with a shocking ferocity.
Eight—I’m in tears and pieces and utterly heartbroken, again, when I have to leave, but also at peace.
iv
A frenemy once told me that whenever I’m faced with a choice between two things, I always choose the harder one. Even back then, I suspected they were right; right now, I choose the harder thing again and again. I know how the easy thing will go. How boring is that? So. Let’s try this. Let’s suffer, in this new way, for a while.
Him: Suffer?
Jane: None of it is easy.
v
None of it is easy, but, actually, truly, honestly? I’m really happy.
True story: but every time I start to talk about how I’m actually pretty happy, I start crying.
That doesn’t make the statement untrue.
I’m walking a hard path sometimes, but, really… I chose it. And I’m (mostly) happy.
A little heartbroken, but perversely, even that feels good.
I’ve been giving this a great deal of thought, kittens, and here’s the thing—generally speaking, I do want to be a good person. I just don’t want to be a better person. I mean, I probably wouldn’t mind being a slightly better person—it’s just a lot of work and I don’t want to do it. Like eating a totally sugar-free diet, exercising regularly, not drinking and not indulging with my occasional sheesha pipe—these are all things I’m capable of doing. I just… in the final analysis, when push comes to shove, insert cliché of your choice here—don’t want to.
You are on a relentless path of self-improvement—the goal, not perfection, I’ll grant you that, but that self-help enlightenment that makes me cringe. I’ve figured out why, by the way—your self-focus, self-improvement? It ensures that you will never actually change the world. You, yourself, after all are the project—the one thing you can control and change, and you do require infinite work…
He, conversely, thinks he’s perfect, no improvement required. When he clashes with the world, it’s the world that must change, not he. He’s often irritating to be around, I won’t deny—but he’s going to impact the world around him. You won’t.
You get upset when we talk about this—when I talk like this—because you sincerely believe that you do what you do for the greater good, not just of yourself and your soul—although, ok, there’s that too, you admit it—but for the Greater Good, two capital Gs, period.
That’s the lie the gurus, be they yogis of ancient lineages or secular life coaches sell. Maybe some even believe it. But the pursuit of self-enlightenment is really just a distraction—a way of sidelining intelligent, big-hearted people, funneling them away from the external work of social change and trapping them in the Narcissistic mirror of self-love.
Yeah, it’s a conspiracy and it’s a brilliant, grassroots one. The Man did not have to create it. He just needs to use it.
And he does.
ii
To be frank—when am I not—I feel the pull and allure of self-improvement too. I have control over so very little in my everyday life, nevermind on the macro political and social stage. My paltry actions on climate change and smashing the white, heteronormative patriarchy… all so insignificant.
But I have 100 per cent control over being thinner. Physically stronger, maybe even ripped. Capable of sitting still for 20-30 minutes each day in unfocused meditation…
Maybe it’s time to start sitting still and meditating again. It won’t change anything—but it will make me feel like I’m doing something.
Working on myself.
iii
I sit down and close my eyes. Breathe. Ugh. No. Not yet. Moral of the story, reiterated: I don’t really want to be a better person. Now excuse me while I go eat a chocolate croissant, not exercise, and have a long nap…
I pick up my Ender from his homeschool school—like school, but part-time, like school, but for weird, unsocialized homeschoolers, like school, but you can tell the teachers you don’t care about academics and grade level and if you see them screwing up your kid’s love of learning and confidence—OMG, none of this is relevant to this post, except that clearly, I still feel defensive about sending Ender to fake school at all, because I didn’t really want to and I wish I had been able to give him the full ten years pre-high school that his siblings got, but such is life and so far, he seems to be thriving—although it was a rocky start, point: I’m picking up Ender from school and as I’m circling the playground with the Bear called Bumblebee, I bump into someone from my previous life.
“Still writing?” she asks me after giving me a shorthand of what she’s been up to over the past decade.
(People always ask that. See Dani Shapiro’s Still Writing for a book-length riff on why that’s such a weird question for a writer.)
“Yes,” I say.
It feels like a lie. Because outside of my morning pages, the occasional blog post, and a handful of bad (so bad) poems, what am I writing?
Well, I write at work, but that’s not really writing, it’s more production… anyway. It feels like a lie and as I excuse myself and yank the dog to finish our round-the-playground loop, I force myself to examine why that “yes” feels like a lie.
The answer is the same as it was on the day I realized that despite the undisputable fact that I’ve made a full-time living writing since I’ve been 17, whenever I said, “I’m a writer” when people asked me what I did or who I was… it felt like a like.
Because real writers write books.
Novels.
I haven’t been working on a new novel since I paused Bingo in February or March. I haven’t even been trying to sell the finished one(s).
So am I writing?
The published titles on my shelf say, “At least you wrote.”
They mock me.
I’m still writing, I tell them.
I think…
ii
There is, of course, one way to NOT make myself feel like a liar and that’s to pick up Matilda, Honey or Bingo and take one of them across the finish line. Matilda just needs a proof and can be subbed. Honey needs a consistency edit and polish, and it’s ready for a beta reader. Bingo needs 50K more words, but that’s a month’s worth of work at most, full-time job, kids and lovers notwithstanding. I’m only working one job now and I live alone, with the kids coming and going only three or four days a week—I definitely have the time.
Why aren’t I writing?
iii
If I were a friend asking me for advice—please don’t—I’d remind them about the hell that was 2019, the strains of the pandemic, the divorce, the stress of living on imaginary money for eight months, the five months of working two and a half full-time jobs, and suggest that they stop being a self-aggrandizing queen (queen can be a gender neutral word) and cut themselves some slack—also, what about that memoir they just finished ghostwriting, what is that, chopped liver?
(It’s so good, btw. Coming to a silver screen near you one day soon, I’m sure of it. Well, I hope. Nothing is certain. But. It’s so good.)
But I’m me, staring at me, and I think that clearly, I need to stop reading Ann Cleeves novels, watching Brooklyn 99 (because, inter alia, ACAB), dancing and dating and, like, write.
At least proof.
So I don’t feel like a liar.
So I don’t disappear.
Because, as everybody knows, when a writer doesn’t write, she doesn’t exist.
iv
Ender had a great day at school and is excited about everything. He likes his math teacher—I like his math teacher—and he loves gym and recess. There’s too much homework, though, he complains. When we get home, I make him a snack and he gets on his computer to double-check what he needs to do for next week—ends up making rockets instead (also homework, but he was just supposed to make one—he makes at least six).
I make supper, assist him a little with the rocket production line, in-between, read The Healers by Ann Cleeves and check work email. Flora walks over in a bit to join us for supper—have I told you Cinder has flown not just the nest, but the province?—and we eat, then clean up and play Anomia.
I walk them to the Coop house in the dark. It’s still early, only 8:30—I could, I should write. Right after I walk the dog, I can write before bed—but on the days that I pick up Ender from school, I like to start work by 6:30 so that I’m essentially done for the day by the time I leave to go get him from school and now, I just want to stretch out on the couch and read.
Be asleep before 10.
I write a couple of (very bad) poems and this blog post first.
Another two weeks, more, of daily hand-written pages, ideas—one really great post about how kids take good parenting for granted—and that’s how it should be—but why da fuq does my daughter notice how hard doing all the things is for her dad, but never, ever noticed it for me, nor does so now—and perhaps she never will, is this something she should notice?—and how can I really write about that while being both honest and taking the higher ground—also, then it goes into how friends take friends for granted and that’s kinda how it should be, but really, maybe not?—screw it, I’m not going to transcribe it.
Another draft post that starts like this:
I’m pretty sure this is Sun Tzu, or maybe Machiavelli:
Don’t back your opponent into a corner unless you want a fight to the death, which you might lose, cause nobody fights with the ferocity and abandon of the desperate.
(It’s neither Sun Tzu nor Machiavelli, but that’s using force of authority to launch into an otherwise weak argument.)
It’s supposed to be an intro to a post about how nobody is saying to the unvaccinated people (some of whom are among the people I love, and if you don’t have in your heart and life any people who think drastically differently than you on key issues, you’re part of all the problems): “I hear you. I think you’re wrong. But I hear you. So why do you think…” –> this is how you begin a conversation.
“You’re dumb and stupid and wrong and what the hell is wrong with you?” –> that’s how you end a relationship.
It’s a good idea, I think, but somehow it doesn’t work—I can’t make it do what I want it to do. Because, again, I realize, I’m holding back.
Moral of this disjointed story: You can’t be truthful unless you’re willing to hurt, possibly alienate people.
Usually, this is not a problem for me.
Right now? I think what the world needs right now is less “truth” and more kindness.
ii
So I’m hanging out with Seth Godin at work (you can’t prove I wasn’t) and he says a bunch of things that are both insightful and obvious, and I find myself wondering why it is that the obvious seems so hard to enact sometimes?
I should have asked Seth when I had the chance…
iii
I have a weird day at work during which I go from meeting to meeting and fry my brain on Teams and Zoom (I hate computer monitors so much right now—when I write now, I write longhand or, if on my laptop, I type with my eyes closed), and feel stupid and sluggish—but those four hours spent sitting in front of the screen qualify as work.
When they’re over, I take the dog for a long walk. I’m stupid for the first 20 minutes, then I start thinking… and at the 45 minute mark, I have a brilliant idea, and also, I see two problems and two actions that I need to take ASAP to cut them off.
So, now, a quandary: that was nominally my lunch hour… but, really, my four hours of meetings (for which I was paid)—largely unproductive. The last 15 minutes of my “lunch hour”? The best work of the day.
The moral of that story: paying people by the hour for brain work is dumb. At the same time, though, there is incredible freedom in knowing that I just owe my employer seven hours a day. When I work for myself, I’m the kind of nasty boss who expects me to perform 24/7. Who needs sleep?
(Me. But when I’m my own boss, I think sleep is for the weak.)
iv
I finished (mostly) a massive project I’ve been working on since June 2020, and it feels really, really good, and now, for the first time since I’ve started my new full-time gig, I’m about to start working only one job—and this is so very exciting (shall I sleep more?)—but also, really, what this means is that I should start/finish another novel—but also, maybe, some downtime is not a bad thing?
True fact: I suck at real downtime.
Probably time to start/finish another novel no one will read.
Or, start to exercise again? Maybe I should start a new martial art, find a non-writing hobby…
^^^We all know that’s not going to happen.
v
For the record, I’m trying really had to NOT start anything for at least the next two weeks.
But November, as every writer knows, is a really great month in which to write a book.
It’s dark when I wake up now, and, ok, I do wake up very early, but, still. Calgary summers seem night-less—dawn breaks while we sleep and the sun sets after we go to bed. The return of night as fall nears portends the dominance of night throughout our long winter.
I don’t want to say I hate the night—I love sleep. Late night parties and conversations. Sex.
But I do dread the dark of November, December, January—it’s still there in February, really. Oppressive. Relentless. Four months of dark, during which sunlight needs to be snatched forcefully from the workday, because it is possible to start school and work, and end it, in the dark.
The dark is not conducive to life and happiness, and as my province continues to ride into a fourth wave lockdown and threaten further restrictions, I am terrified of another dark winter in isolation.
Overwhelmingly terrified.
Breathe.
ii
I’ve talked with my people and I know that no matter what happens, I won’t be alone. They will be my nightlight—we will be each other’s nightlight.
But—breathe—I’m afraid nevertheless
I’m afraid of being alone in the dark.
iii
Being alone in the dark is different than being alone with the dark.
Being alone with the dark is a critical part of my creative practice. It has nothing to do with the dark outside—as the dark outside returns, I realize that I haven’t sat with the dark inside for a while and that perhaps I should.
Come, shadow. Let’s have a heart to heart.
iv
I’ve been feeling busy—lazy—exhausted—restless—all at the same time. I want, suddenly, desperately, more than anything to take a day in bed, a non-moving sick day. But this, that and the other—I’m also afraid that if I stop moving, I’ll never start again and I have so much to do.
Breathe.
Instead of a day in bed, an evening in bed. A mid-day nap.
Breathe.
Regroup.
Face the dark.
v
I make an appointment with the dark. Put it in the calendar. Prepare three key talking points to discuss with the shadow.
For the second time in my life—no, wait, third—I’m having a hard time writing. For someone who does not believe in writer’s block, this is a most humbling admission. And when I say I’m having a hard time writing—I should clarify. I’m still writing for money. And I’m practicing in the Morning Pages. But as you’ve seen by the long stretches of time between blog posts, not a lot more than that.
I can’t claim lack of time as the culprit. I blame it in lack of energy—the pandemic, the continuing emotional and financial adjustment to the divorce (I have to make a lot more money now and all transitions, even good ones, are draining), missing my love who moved to Toronto, still adjusting to the demands and rhythms of my new job…
Lots of legit reasons, but, really, they’re also all just excuses. Clearly, right now, I don’t want to write enough… or I don’t know, I can’t sell myself on the purpose of writing.
My five years of trying to make it as a novelist battered me financially and weren’t that great on my ego either. Why should I pour myself into another novel that nobody will notice or read? That thing I did at work yesterday potentially affected 250,000 people, maybe more.
If you write a book and nobody reads it, does it really exist?
(The answer is No. No, it does not.)
ii
I’ve been in this place twice before and what got me out the first time was a lover, Julia Cameron, an encounter with a practicing, hard-working artist, and a story that I HAD to write.
The second time, it was sheer will. The therapist said, “Could you consider that part of your problem is that you identify with your work too much?” And I said, “Fuck you, bitch, if I don’t write, I don’t exist,” and I went home and wrote three novellas.
The third time… well, I’ll keep you posted. I’m leaning on Vladimir Nabokov and Ursula K. LeGuin right now, but that might be a mistake. He’s a genius and she’s brilliant, and I am ordinary. I’m not downplaying my talents: I write well. I’m funny. I’m creative. Other things.
But nothing in my head or soul will ever produce something as ground breaking as Pale Fire or The Left Hand of Darkness.
Maybe it’s time, again, to lean on Julia. Go on a solo artist date, and make that a weekly ritual again.
Write a bad poem, send it to one of my loves.
Julia, she’s a lot like me: talented, insightful, with stories to tell and a deep understanding of the bones of writing and creativity.
But also, ordinary.
iii
Over the past six months, I’ve led an intensely ordinary life. A Monday to Friday job, children, dogs, friends. No grand events, goals or aspirations—no chasing dreams, tearing pockets of time out of life with my teeth and claws for art.
Just doing the everyday, very ordinary things.
The basics.
I’ve been… content.
Life is much easier this way.
Do you see why I’m reluctant to return to the edge again?
iv
Easier, but, but… if it goes on like this much longer, I will cease to exist.
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]
He tells me to enjoy the summer, what’s left of it, because they’re going to shut us down for the Delta Variant in the fall, and goddammit, no, I refuse—your life is not worth it and neither is mine—there are too many of us human cockroaches around and you know what, if half of us die, whatever, life will go on—I’d rather die than spend another fall, winter locked in m hobbit hole… actually, if you make me spend another winter away from from everyone and everything I love, I will die, blood in the bathtub, I’ve thought out the logistics in great detail last December…
Him: A toddler tantrum of epic proportions.
Jane: The difference between us is that I put into words and into the world what I feel and you just let it fester.
Transitions really suck.
I’m on edge, after a week, a month, a year of anticipating transition after transition after a year, two of unmanaged transitions.
On edge—breathe.
It doesn’t have to feel so jagged.
I crawl into a bath, water clear, almond-flavoured foam—why is my mouth full of bubbles?
ii
Transitions.
Rituals are a lifesaver. Morning pages, coffee with cardamom, walking the dog. Routine and anchors—they keep you—me—moving, creating through chaos.
I’ve hated and dreaded rituals the past two, three years, but I’m starting to give in to them again.
They have a purpose.
They are… soothing.
iii
I think, I hope—I must life as if I believe it’s all going to be ok. We will have a beauitful fall, and Christmas with family and friends, and we will weave the social fabric of our lives in person and not on Zoom. We will meet for coffee and dinner, and not for frigid weather walks.
Did you know, when you start a WordPress blog, it comes with a draft post that walks a ew blogger through what to write, where (not so much how).
Its headline is ‘Hello, World.’
Cute, innit?
Hello, World. I’m here, writing, emoting, sharing. Are you paying attention?
(It isn’t.)
It’s been a slow blogging summer for me, because, 2.5 jobs, children, sleep—also, walking the dog, also, dancing, also, that teary, long goodbye. I’ve been writing longhand every morning, but spending more time glued to my laptop to transcribe and post the occasionally shareable insights—just not in the cards.
And I’ve been ok with that, just as I’ve been ok with putting the novelist on ice for the summer. Radical prioritization—we need to focus on what is most important at the moment. That’s how we get things done.
This practice, and its application this spring/summer in particular, still against the backdrop of the pandemic, drove home to me the importance of choice. This season, I chose NOT to write (much), I chose not to blog—I chose not to chase those dreams, ride those frustrations. So I didn’t feel bad or unproductive (how could I? I was working 2.5 jobs).
Same thing as choosing to stay home versus being forced to stay home…
Choice empowers.
(Most of us are very bad at choosing though, aren’t we? But that’s another story…)
So—I’m choosing now to start stretching those writing muscles more seriously again. Not ready for a marathon yet, I’m not even sure about sprints—but the stretches are about to get more intense and I’m going to start lifting some weights too.
I picked up my first new literary kettle bell yesterday:
Think, Write, Speak, Uncollected Essays, Reviews, Interviews and Letters Valdimir Nabokov Edited by Brian Boyd and Anastasia Tolstoy
People. Nabokov. I would have been his fourth-string mistress, char, boot cleaner in a heartbeat, without a second thought.
Anyway—Hello, World. I know you don’t care. But I’m here.
I exist.
xoxo
“Jane”
PS The reason I had fired all the therapists who were supposed to help ground me, save me while my Flora was so sick—I could not make them understand this very simple truth:
When I don’t write, I don’t think I exist.
I disappear. To myself, most of all, and if I don’t exist for myself, how can I exist at all?
Therapist: We really need to work on your over-identification with your work.
It’s coming on a year since I’ve moved out of the matrimonial house, four blocks over, to a 100-year old furnished garden flat in which I’d spend most of the pandemic.
What a year, people. May none of us ever have to live through such a one.
It’s pandemic-related stresses were such that I’m not sure I really processed—addressed—reflected on the big questions, the end of my 20-year-long marriage. Which I refuse to see as a failure, by the way, even though pretty much everyone around me is trapped in that story. I—we—made things work for 20 years. We worked through some tough shit. And in the end, we decided we didn’t want to keep on working through the same shit for another 20 years. Kudos to those of you who will keep on having the same conflict, the same conversations for the rest of your lives. I thought I could do that too.
In the end, no.
I am still not sure—I will never be sure—if, for the kids, it was the best decision. We were always functional—amazing—co-parents. And I am still not sure—I will never be sure—that the kids get that they were never the problem, or the source of any of our conflicts. And I am not sure—will never be sure—that they understand that I moved out and I left the marriage but I didn’t leave them. It doesn’t matter how many days and how many suppers and how many outings there are—I know it’s not the same as having me there 24/7. I see Ender every day, Flora most days, and the 19-year-old—and living on his own now!—Cinder a couple of times a week… for me, it’s not enough, it’s never enough.
It will never be enough. I will never be sure—with all of that, I don’t regret having acted.
So, there’s that.
ii
Action is better than inaction. That’s my personal take on Krishna’s advice to Arjuna as paraphrased by Stephen Cope in The Great Work of Your Life: “Do any actions you must do, since action is better than inaction; even the existence of your body depends on necessary actions.” (He also says that inaction itself is a type of action, but let’s leave that aside for now.)
The pandemic did keep most of us in some state of not chosen inaction, did it not? What actions, over the past year and a half, have you not taken?
I am thinking about this now—future actions, delayed actions.
It was—for me, for you—in so many ways a year of survival.
We survived.
What now, what next?
iii
The post-pandemic new normal—please, not another lockdown, please, no super-spreader events or vaccine-resistant variants, please, do not take the people I love away from me again—starts for me on a hard note. I’m losing one of my loves to distance and what the pandemic has taught me is that we—not just me—stop loving the people we can’t touch.
Yes, we do—you’re attached to your family in Colombia, Iran, Egypt, Poland much less than if you were there with them, your daily WhatsApp, Telegram exchanges notwithstanding. It’s not the same. It’s not even methadone… it’s pictures of gourmet meals when you’re starving.
Think about how most people’s understanding, compassion for strangers and neighbours alike eroded as the pandemic progressed. Proximity matters. Close physical contact matters—when you move away, I lose you, no matter how many promises to text, call, visit we make.
I will miss you. So fucking much.
What next?
iv
My future-planning ability has been severely impacted by the pandemic. I mean—even grocery shopping for the week versus the day is hard. When you ask, “What are your plans for the summer?” you trigger a mild panic attack. Plans? What are those?
I’m still largely in “I’m just doing my best to survive—I’m just getting from day to day” mode.
But the crisis is over.
We must live as if the crisis is over, anyway—I at least must live as if the crisis is over. You do you.
Her: I had very bad dream. You were hiding things from me. You said you did it not to hurt my feelings and I was so sad and crying—I’m still crying. You betrayed me. You broke my heart.
Jane: Oh, those dreams are the worst. But, um… do you forgive me?
Her: You broke my heart.
Jane: But do you forgive me?
It takes some wheedling, but the upshot of it is that she’ll forgive me, eventually, but I should probably take her out for a drink on sunny patio first. And as I feel guilty for having betrayed her in her dream, and as she feels still betrayed, I marvel at the human mind and its capacity to create stories and a “Why” out of flotsam and jetsam.
Let me be clear: I know I did not “betray” (what a heavy word) my friend, and she knows I did not betray her. But the feelings, damn, so real.
And the thing is, a kernel of truth: I never tell her, anyone, everything. Not so much to protect them, but to…
You: Protect yourself?
…because it’s none of their business. My aches, my pains, my dark? My own.
Go wallow in your own angst; mine is not for exhibition.
ii
Jane: Are you dying or something?
Him: WTF?
Jane: You are being so nice and accommodating.
Him: I’m being nice to you and you think I’m dying? I’m always nice to you. I love you.
He loves me, but he’s not always nice to me, and he’s rarely accommodating. But, ok, thinking that he’s dying because he wants the camping trip to be exactly the way I want it to be, even if it means hauling a pack of firewood into the backcountry might be an over-reaction.
Him: You ever think that maybe you should think less?
All the time. But it’s hard. The neurons fire, pathways form and I start to look for a cohesive narrative.
Him: Could you find one that does not involve me dying?
Maybe.
Jane: Are you moving away?
iii
I take a half day on Friday to pick up a friend from the airport and drive her 90 min out of town. I have no idea what the current state of restrictions in Alberta is right now and I don’t care. But I remember the “illegal” rides I gave to friends in 2020—several of them for COVID-19 tests—and I find myself thinking, again, how the public health policy initiatives during the pandemic constantly favoured capitalism over the human need for social connection, and how it was clear that most of the policy makers just did not have friend or family obligations and most will die alone in long-term care homes with no visitors, not because karma, but because that’s the life they’re building.
(I’m talking to you, Jason Kenney.)
You: Where the hell is that vituperation coming from? Or going?
Jane: Wait for it.
I bump into a friend walking on the river path, one I haven’t seen for months…
Them: I’m double-vaxxed! Can we hug?
I fold them into my arms. A two, three, five minute hug. We’re not that close—have we hugged like that before?
We don’t want to let go.
Jane: OMG, I’ve missed this so much.
Them: I know. I hear you’re licking everyone now?
Jane: Damn right I am. (Lick)
…
Them: More gross and less exciting than I expected. Still. Thank you.
We hug again.
iv
After I pick up my friend the airport, we go for sheesha, to a place we love, with service staff we adore. We talk about this and that, and then I drive her the 90 minutes home. It’s hot hot hot and my car has no A/C. The windows are open. We can’t talk.
It doesn’t matter.
When I get back, I meet the vivid dreamer for a drink. Which she doesn’t let me pay for, because she’s still not ready to forgive me.
Another friend joins us. We talk about this, that and the other. My phone rings.
Him: I’m at MEC. So what exactly do you want to eat on the camping trip?
I am 100 per cent sure now that he’s dying.
Jane: I will eat whatever you bring.
Him: French onion soup with croutons and cheese?*
Bastard.
He’s probably not dying.
He’s moving away.
v
Jane: But seriously. Have you forgiven me yet?
Her: No. I probably will. Eventually. But you really, really upset me.
Dream crimes. They’re the worst and apparently, utterly unforgivable.
Jane: But you still love me and we can still hang out while you’re mad at me?
Her: Of course.
Phew.
“Jane”
PS *This only makes sense if you know I’m allergic to onions, and eat a mostly gluten-free, diary-free diet.
You: This makes no sense.
Jane: Again, why do you always criticize me? Screw off.
I turn many numbers this weekend—47, how did that happen?—and as always when I have an odd-numbered birthday, I miss the symmetry of the even years. I don’t like the odd years—I really don’t like the prime years. And 47? Just look at it. Say it—47. It’s predecessor and successor, 46 and 48, have weight and balance. What can you do with 47? You can’t even divide it, except by one and itself.
You: Feeling old and fixating on the aesthetics of your digits rather than the fact that all life is a relentless march towards death, and also, anytime now, menopause?
Jane: Shut up. I’m going to be young forever.
Well. No, That’s never been my ambition. I’ve never been in love with youth and I’ve never feared either wrinkles or death—although, while we’re being honest, Hollywood and Vogue have done enough of a number on me that I fear extra pounds and tricep flab—why do you think I’ve turned not eating bread and pasta into a religion? Vanity, pure and simple.
Anyway—47. A second pandemic birthday. My first one post-divorce. Everything’s closed and there’s snow in the forecast—why do I live here? A few days before the birthday, “Why do I live here?” peaks. I want to pack, run away—Vancouver, Montreal, Cuba.
Then a friend shows up on my doorstep at 6:30 a.m. with a gluten-free chocolate cupcake and you tell me you’ll buy me a piñata and she says yes, she’s making the Egyptian baklava-style dessert for my birthday cake, of course, and my mom texts, “Black Forest cake for Sunterra, as always?” and Ender clamors for a birthday sushi dinner while Flora slyly steers him towards Chinese… and I remember why I live here.
I still don’t love this number, weird and indivisible prime. But I only have to wear it for a year. One of the really lovely things about life is that everything changes, and nothing is forever. Even inscriptions carved in stone fade, with time.
After
Nineteen years ago—19 is also a prime number, how about that—on my 28th birthday, I hoped my first-born would arrive as a birthday present. He came three days later—although “came” is probably the wrong term, cause he sure did not want to leave the uterus, that one, thank the virgin goddesses of childbirth for Oxytocin, also, epidurals.
Since then, the May long weekend has felt like one prolonged family birthday—lovely and exhausting. My not-so-little eldest turns 19 today, but he’s with his dad today. My time was yesterday. It was all right—for me, it felt all right? For him? Does he appreciate, or take in stride, the maternal birthday, followed by the paternal birthday? Two birthdays, woo-hoo, I win? Or does it suck, and does he wish for last year?
I don’t wish for last year, and I’m pretty sure Sean doesn’t either.
But I will never know, really, what the kids wish.
Just do my best to ensure that what they get is good enough…
In the middle
[deleted]
[deleted]
People. I’m trying to describe what was a really amazing day—day-after—day-after—a magical weekend, each piece of it perfect, even the two that went sideways, because of what followed, and I can’t—chronology limits and words fall flat.
So I won’t tell you what I did. I’ll tell you how I felt, how’s that?
[deleted]
[deleted]
[deleted]
For fuck’s sake. Apparently, sometimes, not even I can make this piece of writing flow… 😉
Let’s try it like this:
I felt so incredibly loved, it was all utter bliss.
After-after
It’s in the calves, actually. That’s where the memory lives. They are tight and sore, and oh, I should slip into a hot bath and get them to relax, but I don’t want to yet. I like the pain. It reminds me that, on my second pandemic birthday with everything closed and nothing allowed, we danced all night anyway, just us, and it was still a party.
Visceral, body memories are the best. That’s why flowers and chocolate are such enduring gifts: you inhale the scent of the one, devour the other. Remember the giver in your body.
After-after-after
I guess there’s a charm to prime numbers. Maybe I’ll learn to love this one.
We’re walking along the river on a breathtakingly beautiful May evening and you tell me that life generally sucks and not much worth experiencing happens after you’re 28—and how do people manage to live through their 50s, 60s, beyond, you don’t know. (And look what we’ve done over the past year to prolong the lives of those in their 80s, WTF is that all about.)
I crinkle my nose and raise my eyebrows and know, now, not to take it personally—you’ve got a thing about 28, and reminding you that you were a few weeks past 28 and I almost 41 when we met, and you already felt that you were past your peak while I was feeling I was yet to hit my prime is not what this story is about.
This story is, I think, about perception. Life past your youth, you say, requires committed self-delusion and would it not be more courageous if people accepted how futile things were and, when they realized that this was it, nothing but a tread mill, a hamster’s exercise wheel—this last, my metaphor not yours—they’d just end things. Properly, with professional assistance—institutionalized euthanasia on request.
I stiffen. My arm is looped through your freshly vaccinated one and my fingers rest lightly on your forearm. I can feel your heart beat through my fingertips, so you feel my stiffening.
“I’m not suicidal,” you say, quickly, forcefully, clarifying because you know you must clarify this to me, you know where any suspicion of this will take me.
“But you’re in a really shitty place.”
“No. I just know life is shit. Has always been shit. But I’m fine. There is a difference.”
You’re not fine, but I won’t argue. I don’t know if it’s pandemic frustration or professional malaise talking—you’re experiencing both in spades—or the anxiety about the health of your faraway loved ones that’s been consuming you for weeks. I suppose all of the above and I suppose it doesn’t matter. Root causes matter much less than pop psychologists and life coaches would have us believe.
I stroke your forearm and think—today, I believe, I know life is beautiful. Because caterpillars turn into butterflies and there are bees building a ground nest outside my front door and we just saw a beaver swimming in the river, right downtown, glass skyscrapers in the background, also, isn’t that crescent of a moon something else? But two, three months ago, I could barely get out of bed and I thought the weight I was carrying would crush me, and I definitely did not think live was beautiful then—I wasn’t particularly sure it was worth living, it just had to be endured, because Cinder, Flora, Ender.
So I won’t insult you with platitudes and clichés—I just stroke your arm.
You switch topics, a little, and talk about the delusions of religion. I don’t disagree, and neither of us mocks. We both know that, for the most part, those with faith are happier than we are. Our loved ones cease to exist when they stop breathing—your uncle, my uncle, both gone forever now.
Theirs go to paradise.
“Except Uncle Mo. He’s definitely in hell.”
And you laugh. I laugh with you. The stiffening in my spine relaxes, a little.
I’m not worried that you will kill yourself. You are, I think, on a very basic level, both too arrogant and too loving to do that, too aware of your importance to your family, your friends—to me. You know your death would destroy us. If things ever get truly dark for you, you will push through them, as I do, not for yourself, but for the people you love, the people who love you.
And I know, too well, from too much painful and so futile actions with my loved ones in the past, that nothing I say or do to you while you’re in this “life is shit” place will change anything, for you. It will just drain me, maybe make me hate you.
Instead, I start planning my birthday party. Three years shy of 50 this year, second pandemic birthday—fuck it all hard, I want to party all weekend. I want cake and balloons and flowers and dancing.
Maybe a piñata.
“Oh my god, you are a 47 year old child.”
Sometimes. But both Jesus and the Buddha thought that imitating a child’s mind brought adults closer to truth, happiness, salvation.
(You said the same thing to me shortly after we met, do you remember? “You are a 40 year old child.” I shrugged, and I kept on tantruming, crying until you fed me ice cream.)
“Can we do all those things?” I ask, five years old, greedy for more cake than is good for me.
“We can do anything you want. It’s your birthday.”
Life is beautiful. Sometimes. And sometimes—often—it is so hard, a slog, it takes superhuman effort to get out of bed. Do the things.
But we do them. Because sometimes, there’s cake and a piñata and always, there are people we love who love us.
xoxo
“Jane”
PS You see the implication, though, right? Check in on the lonely people in your life. The loathsome ones especially. I know it’s hard as fuck, cause you’ve barely got the bandwidth to take care of yourself and the ones you love right now—check in on Aunt Augusta too. She needs you.
If you can’t bring yourself to text or call… send cake.
Also, it’s now nine months that I’ve been living four blocks away from my children and carrying significantly less than 50 per cent of the daily tasks of parenthood, so I feel my moral high horse for this topic this year is a little impaired. Still. I’m dealing with a whole new slew of judgements and issues right now, and mostly, what I’m thinking is that mothers just can’t win.
Really.
No matter what you do, the world will crease its judgemental eyebrows and say that you should do it differently—better—with more grace—with a smile—in nicer clothes—in cheaper clothes—more selflessly… or with more attention to self-care… OMFG kill me know—you can’t win. You’re either negligent or you’re too helicopter, you’ve given yourself up and burned it all on the altar of family—no, actually, you’re too focused on your career, if you were a really good mother, you wouldn’t be so ambitious—you’re too selfish—you’re a martyr—you do too much—you don’t do enough…
You really can’t win.
Flora: Why I don’t want children.
Jane: As I’ve said before, I won’t dissuade you. But also, that’s why I had spares.
Here’s the thing though: it’s not children who make motherhood hard. No. Really. Children, in all their snotty, exhausting glory are amazing. I would not trade that experience, that love for anything. Every sleepless night, every tantrum, every hard hard moment, worth it.
Flora: Even that one?
Jane: Even that one.
Worth it, worth it. What makes motherhood hard is not children—it’s Aunt Augusta and Mrs Johnson and Good Housekeeping magazine, and also Vogue and your CEO, co-workers, neighbours, strangers on the street—society and its expectations.
Screw you all. I’m doing my best.
ii
It’s a drizzly, grizzly rainy day and Cinder is working from 2 pm and my mom is sleeping until 2 pm after spending a night intubating 30 and 40 year-olds in the ER, and also, third or fourth lockdown, everything is closed anyway, so the plan is shawarma take-out for lunch at my place, just me and the kids. Then, drop Cinder off to work and take Flora and Ender to drop off flowers at my mom’s. Then, I don’t know, probably a movie, maybe a nap, it’s a drizzly, grizzly, gloomy day, rain turning to snow and slush on the sidewalks. I’m trying to have no expectations on this first post-divorce, second pandemic Mother’s Day.
We will spend some time together, some time apart.
I will do my best; it probably won’t be enough.
iii
It’s actually pretty good.
The kids are a bit grumpy-dumpy in the car while we go get the food—everybody skipped breakfast to be hungry for lunch and that is just a bad idea—but once we get the food, everything smells so good, is so good. We eat, and the brothers poke at each other only a little bit, and the sister’s tongue, while always as sharp as a guillotine, only comes out intermittently. Cinder gives me a pot of yellow mums and Ender a hand-written card that’s been crammed into his hoodie pocket for days.
Sean hands me a pint of Chocolate Salted Caramel ice cream and says “Happy Mother’s Day” when I come to pick up the kids, and I appreciate the gesture.
My mom wakes up in time that I can do a drive-by flower drop off with all three kids, and we make her day. The kids fight over shotgun, but it’s funny. We drop off Cinder at work and then—everybody needs a nap. I drop Ender and Flora off at the coop with instructions to text me when they wake up and are ready to come over for supper.
I myself crawl into bed, grizzly-drizzly day, heart full of big feelings, head requiring strict instructions so it doesn’t spin negative stories of Mother’s Days past.
Flora texts me after 5 pm, awake and groggy, not really hungry. I go pick her and Ender up, and we argue about what movie to watch. Make popcorn in a wok. Stretch out on my very uncomfortable couch, make it less uncomfortable with pillows, watch Detective Pikachoo and eat lunch left-overs for supper, all is bliss.
Then it’s time to go get Cinder from work—I leave Ender with Minecraft, run Flora home, then to pick up my eldest essential worker, bring him his lunch-for-dinner left-overs. And then, the first sleep-over at Mom’s new house for Ender.
Nine months after I moved out.
Finally.
No expectations. But for God’s sake don’t let him cry and don’t let me cry—it’s ok if he’d rather be at the other house, that is his house and he loves it because I had spent a lifetime making it a child’s paradise.
But. We snuggle and read a graphic novel by one of his You-Tubers, turn off the light—he’s restless. Can’t sleep. We whisper for a while, then turn the light back on. Read another book. He falls asleep, wrapped in a pile of blankets, his hand in my hair.
I am so happy, I cry… but then I sleep, and all is bliss.
I’ve had my first dose of the microchip, kittens—the cheap, doesn’t die in normal refrigerator temperatures one—and suddenly, everything is clear… and I’m yanking your chain, but also not, because I do have to tell you that holding out for the vaccine of your choice is such a privileged person, First World Problem, I can’t even.
Still—I’d no more prevent you from waiting for Johnson & Johnson than I want you to prevent me from making #genxzeneca trend on Twitter.
Which brings me to what’s so very clear—and yes, clearly, it’s the microchip—the problem with the world order as know it.
Ready? It’s, very simply, this:
Intellectual policy makers, democractic governments and many regular people expect human beings to be rational and to act in rational ways, even in irrational situations.
We’re not. We don’t.
That’s it.
That’s the problem.
You know who knows people aren’t rational?
Religious and cult leaders, marketers and spin doctors, populists and fascists.
Which makes me think… they’re probably gonna win.
We’ve got to start a cult, kittens.
ii
Speaking of cults—I’m thinking of workplaces, organizational cultures and indoctrination, and how some places are so good at getting their people to drink the Kool-aid and others just can’t seem to even fake it. At the heart of it, it’s all about… the heart and not the brain. Organizations that recognize that people are irrational and emotional and so make their decisions with their hearts do a better job of making their people buy into their story than organizations that treat people like a number, a variable, a cost. Which is what they are, absolutely, in rational terms: labour is an expense item.
In emotional terms, though?
“Our people are at the heart of everything we do.” Take that, Karl Marx.
iii
Speaking of labour and Das Kapital, I’m writing this on a Friday, as the official work week ends and the labours of love begin. I have so much to do but the microchip is slowing me down a bit, chills, sweats, arm still sore. Mostly, I want to spend the weekend in bed not labouring. I don’t have a hard deadline for the labour love, so it’s easy to put it off.
But if I only rest, I’ll be unhappy. I know this. Some labour is necessary for pleasure and rest to feel… pleasant.
iv
Speaking of pleasure—it will be a gorgeous afternoon and evening, night, and I will feel the sun on my face and all will be right with the world for those delicious moments. Who needs a cult—I’ll make my own Kool-aid. Second dose in 16 weeks, which means only four more months of this half-life. I can do that—you can do that.
xoxo
Jane
PS Posting on a rainy Monday after writing on such a beautiful Friday and thinking how happy I am that on the sunny Friday, I seized the sun by the lapels and drank from it and bathed in it. Today, clouds, drizzle. Gas fire on even though it’s winter, hot mug of tea on the couch instead of wine and sheesha on the patio—but then, perhaps that is more appropriate to a Monday night. Fingers flying on keys, books around me—this is a good night too. But it’s good because on Friday, I felt the sun on my face and laughter of friends beside me.
If I’m making no sense—don’t mind me. It’s just the microchip.
She can’t believe that right now, because she’s a teenage girl. Also, because I’m relatively emotionally disciplined and I don’t make a showcase of either my primary or secondary suffering, she tends to—as do others—think I have no feelings. I tell you, people, teenagers—the most terrifying funhouse mirror of your soul.
Flora: Well, I’m so sorry my illness is causing you so much…
Jane: Um, I wasn’t even talking about you. Why are we in this spiral again?
Because children, rightly, think they are the centre of their parents’ universe and teenagers, wrongly, think they are the centre of the universe.
Enough of that though. Back to this:
I love you. And because I love you, when you suffer, I suffer.
Especially when there is nothing I can do to alleviate your suffering. And there isn’t. All I can do is be here.
Helplessness is awful.
Intentional presence—without interference, without unwanted acts of helpfulness, without making my suffering an additional burden on you… not awful.
But really, really hard.
I love you. Because I love you, when you suffer, I suffer.
I am here for you.
ii
When Flora was so sick, I had to draw borders around the secondary suffering experienced by others—as well as myself.
“Yes. I know you love her. I know you love me. I know you’re suffering. I am not interested in hearing about your suffering or dealing with your feelings. I need to save my child’s life, now fuck the fuck off and let me do what I need to do.”
You: Can I bring you soup?
Jane: Yes. But better yet, don’t ask me what you can do for me. See a need and fill it without adding to my plate.
You: You know I’m here for you. Anything you need.
Jane: Can we talk about this later? I have shit to do.
iii
We have this myth in Western culture—not just Western culture, actually—that suffering ennobles. I don’t know about that. Maybe, afterwards. If you survive. While you’re suffering, you’re mostly an asshole.
It’s okay. You kind of have to be to survive.
iv
You’re suffering and I’m helpless. There’s nothing I can do. You are a lot like me and I don’t want you to feel that, on top of everything else, you have to manage my feelings. I text you kisses and links to songs. Tell you I’m thinking of you, ask for nothing.
It’s not enough, but maybe it’s too much.
I love you and when you suffer, I suffer. That’s just the way it is.
v
The last year has made us intolerant of the suffering of others.
We’ve all been acting like assholes—not because we’re evil or selfish or anything like that. But because we’re all suffering. And it’s hard to feel compassion for others in the middle of our own pain. It’s especially hard to feel it for strangers.
I start here. With you. Start here. With me.
I love you. I love you and when you suffer, I suffer. I’m going to bring you something delicious to eat tomorrow, and see if I can take you for a walk, even though we’re both sick of walking and it won’t help anything.
I am waking up early these days. The new gig is like a new baby—threatening to take up all of my time with its demands. So I wake up before it does, and, wrapped in the pre-dawn darkness and my bath robe, do my morning pages, drink my coffee—very, very slowly—and give my time to my labours of love.
Then, work.
It’s still more of an intellectual, learning exercise—background knowledge, research, thoughts in my head rather than words on paper (or, to be more precise, the screen?). But thinking is physically exhausting—we don’t often appreciate that adequately.
By the time I log off for the day, I’m mentally and physically exhausted. Happy—but exhausted. Intellectually blunted—thinking is hard, decisions, even small ones, impossible.
On the days that I don’t have Ender or the kids coming over for supper, I have a bath as soon as I log off, then eat—force myself to take a walk, thank goodness for the dog—and crawl into bed with BritBox (currently binging Jonathan Creek and really loving how in British TV people are… people-like, both in appearance and character. Not caricatures, not photoshopped, botoxed stereotypes. The villains aren’t all evil and the victims and heroes aren’t flawless. Youth is as complex and painful as adulthood—children aren’t cherubs and the elderly aren’t necessarily wise. And old, wrinkly people fall in love, and nobody thinks it’s weird).
Up early, I crash early. And so, finally, here is a silver lining to the third wave of the pandemic—no FOMO, right? Nothing’s happening, nothing to do. You and I can go for a walk or sit on a patio sipping bear, but, you know, I have a patio of my own and I’m so sick of walking as a social activity—I might as well just go to bed.
I sleep deeply, nine to ten hours a night. I still don’t know if this is a sleep deficit from more than a decade ago when I had three kids under seven—or from 2019, when I just did not sleep—that my body is trying to make-up, or a response to the stress of the pandemic.
You complain of insomnia—I, as soon as I lie down in bed, fall into unconsciousness. It’s blissful. When dreams come, they’re weird as all fuck—so weird and surreal, they neither disturb me nor tempt me to hunt for hidden meaning, omens.
There are no nightmares.
I sleep deeply.
ii
I am not sure how to explain to friends what it is I’m doing for work at the moment. “I write” covers a multitude of sins, so I stick to that. Mostly, right now, I’m learning, and I’m reminded of the seductive power of a mid-life, late-life Master’s or PhD.
Learning a new discipline, a new language—and each discipline, industry, organization has its own language—is intoxicating.
This happens, in one of my classes at the Polytechnique last year:
Student: I can’t wait until I get my diploma and I can stop learning.
Jane: Oh, honey. You’ve just explained why I can’t seem to teach you anything. Can we do anything about that mindset, or should I just give you an F now and explain why you can’t ever ask me for a letter of recommendation?
At the moment, I’m working on teaching myself everything, about a new industry, new organization. New culture, new people.
It’s taking all of my juice.
I sleep deeply.
iii
As Ender comes to the end of what is either grade six or grade five—surely not yet grade seven—I can never remember rightly, and, really, what does it matter—we’re entering year three of what has essentially been the Minecraft and Youtube curriculum. Between Flora’s illness, COVID, the divorce—now my new job—what else could it have been?
I’m researching resources, books, games—Youtube channels—wanting to give him some more scope to explore this summer, and in the fall.
Ender: Why?
Jane: I just… I just want you to be learning more.
Ender: I’m learning all the time. And having fun.
Even seasoned unschoolers need this reminder once in a while.
Nothing By The Book 