Morning pages. Brain dumps. Stream of consciousness. This kind of journaling is supposed to be uncontrolled messy nonsense.
I did that for a whole year.
This year with no commitment to someone else to do it that way I’m less consistent.
So I let three pages take twenty-nine minutes today. With well-lubricated Polar Black (Noodler’s) ink, I made smaller less-messy letters than usual for a brain dump. The words slid out somewhere between prim and pukefest.
We just found out my mom has pancreatic cancer. The day before Thanksgiving. Mortality is on my mind, written on the inside of my eyelids so I can’t make out exactly what it says even though it’s so close to my face it’s inside me. I can’t tell if that makes journaling seem more important (or at least useful), or completely fucking absurd.
She is taking care of business. Taking care to proudly not leave us any messes. There is no talk about what she wants to do if her time is as short as this form of cancer tends to allow people. It is all business. And “how much did that cost?!? I wish you hadn’t done that” when I tell her I ordered her a bluetooth keyboard so she can type more easily on her phone.
The least I could do is leave clear instructions for my loved ones to burn everything I’ve ever written. In lieu of life insurance, and as consolation for the enormous untidy mess I am likely to leave behind if this shock of having Bad Cancer Genes — a bullet I thought we’d dodged! — comes to fruition inside me too, you have my blessings — nay ORDERS — to burn it all. Don’t sort through it, don’t try to find anything worth saving. There’s nothing important here. Let it all blur with burning into oblivion.
What does Polar Black smell like when you put it on fire with tens of thousands of stupid pieces of paper?
