bitch work

Day one of classes even though we did trainings and orientation all last week so it feels like day seven or 47. Talked to G yesterday while I was walking home from statistics bootcamp, which had been another opportunity for me to feel slow and stupid. I realized I haven’t had to really think in quite a few years. I hope and believe that my brain is waking up, but it may take a little while. 

I guess this will be an opportunity to develop a thicker skin toward failure, which is easier said than done I realized when I tried to tell T about my frustration with the math assessment, but when he asked what I meant by “math is so abstract” I couldn’t answer and felt the tears coming and the hotly bound feeling of frustration. I had to get off the phone even though I’m sure it made me look like a big baby, but if he can’t handle me at my worst, which is during either tennis or math, then you know the rest.  

He had written me a very sweet birthday card in which he expounded on the things he liked about me, one of which was my “indomitable jocularity.” I guess I’ll show him. 

Anyway, I was talking to G who I think is doing better. Her sojourn at home has reminded her of her worth and of the wider world. Now that she has remembered that there are possibilities, that she has something to lose, she can go back to Hawaii and negotiate with B about the future. I think they’ll break up, but maybe not. She has been very careful when talking about him, so maybe she does love him. 

I told her that although stagnation sucks, movement is also hard. When you’re stagnant you think you’re purposeless, dumb, and boring, but it’s only once you identify a purpose that you know you’re dumb and boring. Neither state is perfect, but I admitted that moving feels better. She said I was scaring her. I said it was too hot, and I couldn’t wait for fall, and thus immediately fell back into the same trap. There’s no point in wishing to speed up the present, because the future always comes. 

Out of apartment early yesterday. Breakfast at a lovely, random restaurant of which there are many. As our Acropolis tour guide told us, you can pretty much stumble into any dining establishment in Athens and have a good meal. She suggested that if you don’t like the food it might be a you problem.

From breakfast, we walked to Kerameikos which includes a cemetery with tombs dating back to 2700 BC. It was touted as not being “just” a cemetery but it was hard to get a grasp on what exactly it was since it was so worn down and the QR code map wouldn’t load. Not to sound like a philistine but the turtles that ambled slowly through the ruins were the highlight for me. Watching a turtle eat a shrub requires a lot less imagination than trying to extrapolate a neighborhood from a stone block.

That said, the Acropolis, where we went next, was amazing. Family friend and Egyptologist JJ had put us in touch with an archaeologist friend of a friend who does private tours. Kiki painted a vivid and fascinating picture of the history of the Sacred Rock. (The Acropolis is the rock/hill and the Parthenon is the largest temple on it.) I will not try to recreate her 3 hour tour here but suffice it to say, knowing what you’re looking at makes all the difference when it comes to ruins.

Then it was back to apartment for rest and relaxation as we waited for mom’s friend Laurie to arrive. She did and we had a delicious late dinner at another of Athens’ lovely little restaurants.

Here I sit on this balcony overlooking the birthplace of democracy and all I can think is, damn, Philadelphia needs more balconies. They are ubiquitous in Athens and often run the full length of the floor (every floor) so that the effect is like an exterior wall had been taken down and we’re seeing the innards of the building. The effect of that is the thought, “I am in Europe,” which is one of the happiest thoughts an American can have.

Yesterday, I got in at 8am after probably taking more lorazepam on the plane than was strictly necessary. I checked into our sweet Airbnb, which is lovely, great view, and despite the fact that it’s a full-time bnb, convincingly imitates a place where someone could actually live, i.e. there are table lamps and not just glaring overhead lighting. Napped then went for a walk in a cute as can be little neighborhood of Cycladic architecture (that kind you like), which has a fun backstory that I don’t remember.

Mother arrived late, drank wine, bed.

Spanikopita for breakfast. Aborted walk when we had brilliant idea to head to “Athens Riviera” aka the beach just outside of town and actually not just a beach but a salty little lake right across the street. No complaints about Lake Vouliagmeni. Pretty water, rocky walls, lagoon vibes (because it is a lagoon), those fish that nibble your feet which feels good but also sort of obscene. It’s hard to look people in the eye while it’s happening.

Easy bus to train journey back to Athens. We agreed that this would have been my dad’s favorite part. The man loved public transportation.

The most salient thing about finding the lump was my lack of worry. I had my regular gynecologist appointment coming up and figured I’d mention it then. This is notable because I’m a known hypochondriac. (Side note: doesn’t it feel like it should be “hypERchondriac”?) Anyway, to give an example, I’d pulled a muscle in my back a few months before and became convinced that the pain was actually from a tumor on my spine that had finally grown big enough to make itself known. I spent an evening googling symptoms of bone cancer. That’s the kind of cancer that animates my nightmares. For some reason, breast cancer never really caught my imagination. It seemed too feminine, too pink, too popular. I had the irrational but strong belief (how often those two go together) that my breasts weren’t big enough to cause any problems. 

When Dr. Ruby confirmed the presence of the lump, she said, “You’ve earned yourself a mammogram and an ultrasound,” and I swear I felt a flash of pride like I’d gotten 100% on a test. After so many health fears had come to naught, I had finally correctly diagnosed myself with something. A lump. She said it was almost certainly a cyst but I needed to get it checked out. “I can’t pretend I didn’t feel it,” she said, then amended, “Well I could, but I shouldn’t.” She tells me – and I confirmed this – that 90% of newly discovered breast lumps turn out to be benign. This fact didn't stop me from descending into existential despair over the next week.  

Two days later, I was in Brooklyn visiting M for a long-planned weekend in the city. He’s either a good or a bad person to be around for something like this. He’s had his own health fears, so he’s genuinely empathetic, but because he’s pessimistic about the body’s ability not to totally fuck everything up, there’s the feeling when you’re talking to him about your lump that although he’s telling you it’ll be fine, what he’s thinking is how sad it is that you’re gonna die. 

Over that weekend, I cycled repeatedly through the stages of grief, but spent most of the time jumping from denial to acceptance of my imminent death and back again. I got so far ahead of myself that there were times when I was actually already dead. It’s not just that the lump would be found to be cancerous. It’s that it would be found to be terminal and the only question would be how long I had. I felt that I could work with two years. This seemed like long enough that death could still feel unreal. Long enough that other people I knew could conceivably die before me, a possibility that I found comforting. If not two years, then I didn’t want more than a week. Long enough to surround myself with loved ones but not so long that I could be expected to get a good start on a memoir. 

I walked around Brooklyn feeling the sun on my face. Oh beautiful sun. How I’ve loved thee from afar. I wondered how old John Keats was when he died of tuberculosis. “I already got more time than a lot of people,” I told M. I think of a friend of a friend, a promising young woman, who had died in a horrific car crash right after college. Now that’s unfair. I’m 37. At one time that would have been considered a ripe old age.

We go see The Zone of Interest and afterwards go home and watch Deep Impact. This double feature of death was a mistake. By the end of the night I feel bereft, although I did have a Deep Impact based realization. I’d never really understood making a huge deal about the world ending, because we already know the world ends. It happens when we die. But as I watched our asteroid-spotting hero running up a mountain to escape the tidal wave that had already killed Tea Leoni and her feckless father, I realized that it actually would be way sadder to die knowing everyone else was dying too. This realization made me feel spiritually generous and a little less morose about my quickly approaching end. At least the world would go on without me. 

By the time I went to my mammogram appointment a week later, I’d roped so many people into this little psychodrama that I was starting to get the appeal of cancer. People really seemed to care! Everyone should die twice. That way you could really enjoy it the first time. 

After the mammogram I get an ultrasound and then lie on the gurney in the darkened room waiting for the doctor to come and confirm my fate. The doctor does come. He’s young. Beautiful boy. So much life left to live. He tells me matter of factly that from what they can see on the mammogram, it’s not likely to be cancer. I still need to get a biopsy, but he declares the whole situation low risk and walks out as I sniffle into a tissue.  

I read that people who identify as hypochondriacs die an average of five years earlier than those who don’t. This is the hard truth about hypochondria, one day you’ll be right. But that day is not today.   

The euphoria doesn’t hit for a few hours, but when it does. It does. This is the secret upside to letting yourself completely unravel. The hypochondriac’s little prize, which is actually not so little. When your fear comes to nothing you have the elation of someone who has narrowly escaped death. You’re not just back to where you were. You’re better than ever. Music tastes like ice cream. Ice cream feels like cocaine. Were you actually close to death? No. But that doesn’t matter to your brain, which can’t tell the difference between a lion and a door slamming kind of loud in your vicinity. 

You realize this is what you could do with your one wild and precious life. Instead of living, perform death. Be carried from one little hysteria to the next. The perfect narrative arc over and over until it’s over. Luckily by that time you’ll be so good at it. It’ll be perfect. You’ll have finally gotten it right.  

They say to follow your passion, but won’t that make you look a little desperate? Always trailing behind your passion trying to find out where it’s going. Peering through restaurant windows at your passion having lunch with someone who just got a book deal. I suggest an alternative. Unfollow your passion.

It’s like how they say you won’t meet the love of your life till you stop looking. Get a job in a totally unrelated field. That way you’ll be busy doing something you hate while your passion is seeing other people. Never look directly at your passion for this is like staring into the sun. As with the sun you don’t need to be able to see your passion to know it’s there, somewhere, unless it’s nighttime, and you don’t understand astronomy. The point is you don’t need to always know where your passion is. In fact, it’s better if there are times when you wonder if you’ll ever see it again.

I recently read an article about a woman who was in a bad car accident with her whole family. She suffered a traumatic brain injury which acted as a short cut to a mental state that many busy, ambitious people work hard – through meditation and relaxation techniques – to achieve. Her mind had quieted. She stopped bringing her phone on the subway, content to just sit and think of nothing. She found this change terrifying.

It’s an interesting article, but I'm mainly bringing it up because one of the images used to illustrate it was very similar to an image I saw in a particularly arresting dream I had several years ago. In the dream, I look into my own mouth, down my esophagus and into my ribcage where a face looks up at me with an expression that is both playful and sinister. I had this dream soon after starting therapy with a Jungian analyst and interpreted it as my unconscious asking if I was really ready to do this. 

I saw this therapist for a couple of months, but we only had a few sessions during that time because she kept canceling and once even straight up forgot that we were supposed to meet. 

During the rescheduled session, she did the video call while pulled over on the side of a busy road at night in the rain. She kept dropping the phone. About 20 minutes in, I saw movement in the back seat and asked if there was someone else in the car. She turned around and upon “discovering” that there was a man in the car started yelling, “What are you doing here?!” She sent him (her husband it turned out) across the street to Lowe’s assuring me that she had thought he was already there. I watched this performance amusedly. I mean, it was a sedan for god’s sake. There was no way she hadn’t known he was back there, hadn’t in fact instructed him to lie down on the seat while she was on the call. 

I ended things during our next session, but I don’t think I even mentioned this incident as a causal factor, which shows a degree of confrontation avoidance I now find surprising. I think I was genuinely embarrassed for her, and by extension for myself. 

After seeing the image in the article I was worried that something bad was going to happen and decided I should be careful around cars. That was two weeks ago

I think being a ghost is probably like trying to run in a dream. You’re slow and clumsy. Can’t figure out why your feet don’t work right. Turn a corner and suddenly you’re back where you started. This is why ghosts do ridiculous and ineffectual things like rearrange your throw pillows when what they want to do is say, “Jenny, it’s your mom. Don’t marry that asshole.”

That was the thought I had while reading this creepy article in the new issue of Harper's about a little girl who went missing in the Arkansas mountains and when found spoke about an “imaginary friend” who walked with her to the river where she was rescued several days later. 

Several people close to the incident came to believe that the imaginary friend was the ghost of another little girl who had been murdered in those same woods decades before. The writer of the article, who is also the cousin of the girl who was briefly missing (not the ghost), is understandably skeptical about the ghost story wondering why the ghost would have chosen to lead the girl away from the trail where she became separated from her grandparents and toward a river where she was only found by chance. To this question I would say it’s because being a ghost is like trying to run in a dream. You’re slow and clumsy and have to take a roundabout route to communicate even the simplest messages. 

The aspect of the ghost story that even the writer found difficult to explain is that the girl who was missing and then found said her imaginary friend’s name was Alecia. She couldn’t have known that when alive, the ghost girl had sometimes referred to herself by a made-up name that was pronounced, ‘all-i-see-uh’. 

What would be the ultimate test of ego death for you? How do you know you’ve healed?

I can’t stop watching this video in which a dog’s owner turns away from her pet’s enthusiastic licks. The dog pulls its head back, looks extremely perturbed for a moment, and then whacks the woman on the shoulder with its paw. It's stunning how closely it resembles a toddler’s reaction to being snubbed. Frustration over interpersonal rejection is a reaction that feels more human even than love. 

Have been in a position twice recently in which men have assured me that they didn’t want to lead me on. When I told a friend about this, saying that the person in the first instance had said it, “Apropos of nothing!” She responded skeptically, “Nothing?” I had to concede that it was kind of apropos of something since we had just gotten out of a 6-month relationship during which he had said he didn’t want anything serious and then escalated the relationship at every turn. Until he started to de-escalate it, that is. I didn’t really consider this to have been “leading on” though since I think he was genuinely ambivalent and not being purposefully deceptive. (I mean ambivalence in its traditional definition – feeling strongly in both directions – not “not caring either way,” as it is often understood.) Leading on requires that you have a sense of where you’re going. Otherwise, It’s just wandering aimlessly while holding a leash. 

We disparage ambivalence but it’s leagues ahead of apathy.

The problem with telling someone that you don’t want to lead them on, is that the statement is just blurry enough that it’s easy for the led to delude themselves. I’m not sure that other people need to take responsibility for our willful blindness, especially when they don’t fully know what’s going on either, but in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king. 

The other man (second instance) seems to understand this. No matter how many times I tell him that I’m an adult freely making her own decisions he remains rightfully skeptical. He sends me a song called “The Heart Remains a Child”. I wonder later whether this was a mea culpa or an accusation. More likely it was neither. Just a song that he likes. I’d like to be in a relationship where my cryptography skills were actually put to good use.  

I’ve been noticing how often adults are deeply ambivalent about even the most significant aspects of their lives. Wanting to be here and also there in such equal measure that the slightest breeze could tip them either way. 

I aim to be that breeze.

A woman at the dog park tells me her corgi, Daphne, speaks to her using buttons programmed to say English words when pushed. Daphne had apparently told the woman she had a UTI by pressing “outside” and “no” over and over again until the woman took her outside and saw that she was peeing blood. “That’s amazing,” I say, genuinely happy for her delusion. Sometimes you just want to be conned. 

I had been telling everyone how well I was doing for a month before considering this may not be what everyone wants to hear. Still I felt that I was allowed to brag after six years of frequent misery in Seattle. Totally cut off from creativity. Not wanting to hear that other people were doing well. Now, like someone who becomes beautiful late in life, I couldn’t get over myself. 

My friend asked what I liked about Philadelphia, and I realized I didn’t know if I liked the city or was just having good sex. 

But I think it’s the people. They’re friendlier here. L looks at me strangely when I say this and tells me East Coast people aren’t known for their friendliness. Okay, then they're more open to conversations with strangers. She nods, apparently accepting this.  

On a podcast I hear that Americans are spending more and more time alone. This is certainly supported by my own experience, which is why I need to be in a place where strangers will talk to me. Where you ask someone for directions and halfway through they say they’ll just take you there. They’re going that way anyway. Of course, it’s my belief that this is true that makes it true. I’m friendlier in Philadelphia, and so people in Philadelphia are friendlier to me.  

S sends me a philosophical book called To Have or to Be. Exactly, I think as I press “Pay” on another $50 order from Sephora.

Currently in the liminal space between addresses. I’m lucky enough that that space involves one four story brick semi-mansion next to the museum in Philadelphia and a breezy place on the Jersey shore where the doors, warped by the sea air, are never truly closed. (Really, where would I be without the Cunniffs?) I hadn’t realized I was lucky, but that was mainly because I was stressed about finding my own place to live and also a place for my jittery dog to live while I was in Iceland for two weeks starting soon. Very soon. 

The Airbnb host, Thordis of course, emailed to say that the volcanic eruption had been a disappointment, although she assured me that there is still much lava under the ground. I’m not so disappointed myself, because I remember the icelandic volcano of almost a decade ago that disrupted plane travel from anywhere to everywhere. Still get a little shock when I realize that I remember a news story from 10 years ago. This suggests I’m an adult, which is also suggested by most other facts except some that I am obsessed with, ie. still being mistaken for someone in their early 20s (sometimes; much more rarely now than ever before).

Feel that I am finally ready to sink my teeth into the career part of my star chart although an astrologer recently told me that it’s time for travel. He also told me that I hide myself from people and let others dictate what I do, and now I feel that I’ve betrayed myself when I accept a second serving of wine that I wasn’t sure if I wanted. 

It seems like there could be the risk, with everyone ‘stepping into their power,’ of becoming a myopic asshole, but fortunately that’s already happened. Does ‘stepping into my power’ offer too broad a license? Probably. I knew a girl who was very disagreeable for a year straight after stepping into her power, and she lost some friends but then I think leveled out and possibly more powerfully than ever before? I don’t know because we don’t talk anymore, but for a completely different reason I swear.

Last night we toasted my dad’s 74th birthday on a balcony in Reykjavik. A plate of fresh bread, butter, apples, Camembert, and slices of Snickers. Coke Zero in wine glasses, and both of us wrapped in gray blankets against the evening chill. He mentioned how he has become invisible in his old age, and actually that he had first noticed it when we visited New York on our last solo trip together 15 years ago. The feeling of not being able to get the bartender’s attention at a crowded bar. The sudden impossibility of ever being able to get the bartender’s attention again. I said this was probably more jarring for women since the difference between the vocal attention of youth and the later invisibility is so stark. He said, invisibility is women’s consolation prize for having had to be at least a little bit afraid almost every moment of their lives. This clarity struck me, and I realized that I might have been so caught up in the ways he’s changed that I had stopped listening, had become unable to hear him. Earlier, I mistook a joke for an earnestly infuriating question asking, “Are you serious?” 

The self-checkout at CVS beeps infernally that the coupon slot is full even though I have no coupons. “Help is on the way” it screams but like the flight attendant talking about a “momentary delay” this is a lie. I switch to a different machine only to be stopped when it decides there is an unscanned item in the bagging area. This time help is on its way and when it arrives I’m instructed not to put scanned items in the bagging area anymore. I stare blankly at this young person sorry that this is happening to either of us, sorry that I look like the semi-frantic white woman that I am.

It came on suddenly on Wednesday afternoon, and by the evening my fever was 103°. Feeling just truly awful, I called my mom to complain and was told by both her and our longtime family friend Alison that I should go to urgent care, and then once we realized urgent care was closed, the emergency room. Alison – tall, uncompromising, fiercely loving, stubborn as hell -- had spent the last two years being treated for metastatic lung cancer, but was calling the fight. My mom was spending a few nights with her in the lead up to her “final exit” on Saturday when she would end her life via a fatal dose of prescribed medication thanks to Washington's Death with Dignity Act.

My mom, Alison, and her beloved daughter Alyssia making frittata in our old house (2010)

Despite being a nurse and therefore a person who had spent her life ministering to the needs of strangers, Alison had refused to hire a caregiver. She hated the idea of a stranger in her house messing things up, and much preferred the idea of her friends and family doing the messing. And her loved ones had stepped up, caring for her in shifts all the way to the end, despite the fact that all along there had been the means to hire help. Many people wouldn’t have the guts to test their friends like this, especially at the end, but Alison was brave like that.

Sometimes my dad and I challenge each other to imagine what it might be like to be dead forever, and there’s this vertiginous drop and then a feeling of waking up and I know I have failed. We move on to other topics. My dad has told me that even though he has terminal cancer he can’t really fathom the fact that he will die much more than I can. It’s basically impossible to understand the concept of being dead forever. As Joseph Campbell said, “Eternity isn’t some later time. Eternity isn’t even a long time. Eternity has nothing to do with time.” It would be like a fetus trying to understand what it is to be born. 

Something else that’s non-linear is fever. 103° is uncomfortably hot. It’s the point that you start putting towels dipped in ice water on your body even though this too feels awful because you’re achy and somehow also freezing. It’s only three degrees hotter than 100° but that’s a lot if you consider there’s only like seven degrees between fine and dead. 

I didn’t know which hospitals in the city took my extremely “boutique” kinda-Cigna-kinda-not PPO plan and attempts to log in to my “provider finder” kept coming back with a wrong username or password message. I was feeling bad enough that I knew if I didn’t do this right now, I would just lie down and hope for the best, so I picked the nearest ER and called an Uber. 

It was an unseasonably warm night, and the waiting room was crowded but hushed. The ED experience itself was truly not bad, and I spent most of the four hours I was there in my own watching Nightmare on Elm Street. Everyone was extremely friendly. The doctor even made me feel like I wasn’t an idiot for coming in, saying she’d had several strong women, ER nurses even, felled similarly by what turned out to be the virus that causes the common cold. Our immune systems over-reacting after several years of coddling. By midnight my temperature was down to 99°, and I was ready to go. Hours later, it had climbed back to 103°. It cycled like that for the next 36 hours.

On Friday, my mom told me that Alison had looked at her and said in awe and not quite belief, “This is my last day on Earth,” which rocked me more than learning the news of her death the next day would. Probably I could comprehend the concept of her last day on Earth, but not her actually dying. You think when it happens you will understand it to be true, but then it’s just like everything else: not what you hoped for or despaired over and in fact something else entirely. 

Speaking of courage in the face of extreme adversity, I mustered the strength to call my insurance and find out if the hospital I went to was in network. The call is answered by Christopher, who refers to himself as a concierge. He assures me that no, the hospital I went to is not covered. When I sputter that other hospitals in the same hospital chain are covered, he explains that just because two hospitals are part of the same organization does not mean they take the same insurance since each individual site apparently contracts with insurance based on its own personal preferences. You can be sure this is the case because if it’s asinine, opaque, and cruel it’s the American healthcare system. 

I started to cry imagining how many thousands of dollars my little sojourn had cost me and for what? Nothing had really been done (there was also not really anything to be done). I hadn’t needed medical care so much as medical assurance that I wasn’t going to die. But at 9 o’clock at night, the ER must serve both functions (and many more). It hadn’t turned out to be an emergency but that’s the thing about emergencies: if you wait too long to find out if it is one, it will end one way or another, and you might not like “another” and you might like “one way” even less. 

As soon as I started crying something changed in Christopher and he went from being a haughty mansplainer to just a man, ie terrified of women’s tears. “No no no no no no you don’t need to cry. Oh please don’t cry…” he said. I blubbered that it was “just so complicated,” by which I meant the American Healthcare System, but he thought I meant Life. 

And again Christopher cycled, becoming not just a man but the saddest man on Earth. “Ramona it’s going to be ok. I understand that life is really hard. Believe me. I cry every day. My friends are like, ‘Christopher, are you ok?’ And I tell them, ‘Every morning I wake up is a win.’ The thing is, it could be over likethat, and I’d rather have a hard life than a short one.” 

He went on like this for 10 minutes, and although he clearly knew he was on a recorded line, at one point saying, “We’re your health insurance company. We want you to get the most out of your benefits,” I actually did feel better when the call was over. This might have had something to do with learning I “only” had to pay 30% on out of network ER visits (after the $1000 deductible), but it was also his earnest reminder that these days, no matter how dumb and twisted, are in no way guaranteed. It could and one day will be otherwise. 

He ended the call by giving me his extension and telling me to call when I got the bill and also if I needed anything in general, “If you just need to cry that’s fine. I’ve helped members order pizza, find a lawyer. As long as it isn’t illegal, unethical or immoral I will do what I can to help you.” At this point, it was clear that Christopher was not a man terrified by women’s tears, but a man who loved tears of all kinds, and in fact required them as payment for his services. 

On Saturday morning I was feeling well enough to get out, and took a long walk north into Fishtown. At some point Cathy called and we chatted while I stood on the sunny sidewalk eating a free cupcake. We talked about Alison, who at that point had an hour and 15 minutes left until she was dead forever, and the Phillies, and whether we would get brunch next weekend. It’s psychotic that anyone could speak of such things – could speak period – when someone they know is about to die, but then you do it and you see how it can happen. Does happen. Everyday. How we keep living even while people die forever. 

Cathy had just come back from a trip to Seattle where she had stayed with my dad while my mom came to visit me in Philadelphia. She said it was a highlight of her year. Spending time with my dad has always been good for that, but more generally being in the company of people who are seriously ill is often a surprisingly life-giving experience. You trip back over the threshold, relieved. The sun is out. A store that sells $40 candles is opening down the block. 

Somewhere over America. Already regretting buying this journal. Handwriting terrible. Hand already deeply uncomfortable 16 words in. Wait, only 12 words. Felt like 16. See what I mean?

Need to write to get over paralyzing fear of writing but also need to physically learn how to write again, apparently. Hard to believe we used to do this all the time. Fingers squished into painful little fist around the pen. Index fingertip white and bloodless from forceful pressing against hard little pen. And add fake nails? Forget it. Going back to laptop will be a treat.

That's how you make yourself write: Try to do it longhand and return to typing will be like return to walking after running.

Other things:

Desperate to be told what to do with life

Considering eat, pray, love but w/surfing in Jersey in winter

Masters in bioethics vs interior design?

Think of recording goodbye video as plane is crashing down and posting to Instagram. Logistics of this are unclear. Surprised at instant but momentary calm this provides. Never felt much connection to the idea of leaving something behind to be remembered by.

Imagining M sitting next to me or maybe that M is me. He’s unbothered by flying and immersed in whatever he’s reading. Totally self contained. His face looks so beautiful at rest.

A deep intake of breath followed by an annoyed little huff (learned from the dog).

Looking at a picture of the dog wearing a red bandanna and looking perturbed.

Listening to soundtrack to Inside and thinking of how I did the same thing when losing my mind in Alaska with Jamie. Trying to figure out whether I regret going to Alaska. Initially I said yes but two months later it feels like an experience I might not trade. You learn something from that level of misery.

Tapping fingers on tray table and tensing all muscles in body during more serious turbulence.