january 10 2024

It’s the middle of the week and I don’t really have anything to do. “I’m taking time off,” I tell everyone and then I sit at home and think too much. Today, I do laundry. I sweep and mop the whole house. I clean out the fridge. I wipe down the mirrors. I re-organize my office. I’m reading Julia Fox’s memoir, Down The Drain. Halfway into chapter 1 and I start crying.

Usually I don’t think about everything that’s happened but Julia is evocative and a good writer and she is talking about her childhood.

My present is a miracle but sometimes, I get so sad about the past.

In many ways, I grew up wild and feral. I remember being 11 years old, filled to the brim with fury and fight. I think about our old house on [redacted] Street, in the middle of the suburbs in the West End of Montreal. We lived by a line of old train tracks and if I try really hard and focus very closely, I think I can remember the sound of the whole house quietly shaking as the trains passed by.