A part of me laughs reading about
Suleika Jaouad’s journaling practice
The seriousness behind it
The intentionality
I starting journaling
Keeping a diary
Because Elizabeth Wakefield in Sweet Valley High kept a diary
And, because she was the nerdier book-smart twin,
I wanted to be like her
I wrote in code for a bit
To deter prying eyes
But gave it up when my boyfriend (who was studying computer science) figured it out in a few minutes
I still remember the code
My high school friends teased that I would journal on my honeymoon
I did, for the record (haha)
And my (then) husband didn’t mind

I got my first diary for my 10th birthday
Hard cover, blue, with an art nouveau illustration of a woman clutching an armful of fruit on the front, and scented pastel colored pages
Thirty years later there are over 70 journals sitting on the bookshelf
“Lockable” dairies with pale pink pages
Exercise books that I covered with white paper and words cut out from magazines
Lovely leather-bound books with hand-made paper
Pretty cloth-bound books from fancy stationery stores
And even one I made at camp
Mostly there are notebooks of varying sizes,
Books that were easy to carry in my backpack
For writing on the bus or the train
Or, on lucky luxurious days, while hurtling through mid-air on a Boeing bound for someplace else
The pages are filled with angst and dreams, crushes and heartbreaks, joys and boring day-to-day minutiae
Ticket stubs and bits of brochures and seemingly significant fortune cookie predictions
The diaries are not particularly profound
They’re not the record of a historically significant person
I have no idea what will happen to them when I’m gone
But they’re my most prized possession

After I got sick I fell out of the habit
There was so much to say, I couldn’t say anything at all
But I did make an attempt of keeping up with morning pages
A habit started in my mid-twenties
And now I have 31 spiral bound 5-subject notebooks to accompany the journals
Pages and pages of streams of consciousness scribbles

And if I think about it, I also have over a decade of blog posts to add the pile
Poems and scribblings and reflections
Tracing my desire to find the beauty, find the joy, find the light
Amidst break-ups and falling in love and moving away and falling love again and moving away again and cancer and to trying to find the light again

It has been delightfully fun to follow the prompts in Suleika’s book
My favorites so far have included
Write with your non-dominant hand (Marie Howe)
Write a paragraph about the funniest thing to happen to you from the perspective of an inanimate object (Kiese Laymon)
What would you write if you weren’t afraid? (Dani Shapiro)

What would you write if you weren’t afraid?

When you spend a sunny late spring afternoon
Hanging out in Central Park
In a shady spot beneath tall trees
With a lovely group of folks
Some you’ve known for a few years now
Others you just met today
And you eat pizza and cookies and candy
And chat about theatre and shows and Beyonce
And tie-dye clothes with brightly colored ink
You feel like you are five again
In the best possible way
And you head home
With a heart full of light.

I had a wish
To live in a place
Where I could eat breathe and sleep theatre
Talk about theatre all day long
Immerse myself in a world of musicals and plays and art
And how do you know what you want til you get what you want and you see if you like it?
Well I’m here
And pardon my French
But I fucking love it
I’ve had the most excellent fortune
To see literally hundreds of shows
And it never gets old
The thrill of walking into a theatre
And wondering what magic awaits
To be handed your playbill
And rifling through the names
Oh I remember her from -
I loved them in -
And increasingly
Having had the pleasure of actually working the people on the stage and behind the scenes
Going to the Performing Arts Library to watch archival recordings on a weekly basis
If my sixteen year old self could see me now!

​I spent the day at Buck’s Rock
Giving a tour in the rain
To new campers and their families
Trying to convey the magic
That happens in the summer
And then I made my way
All the way to BAM
The Brooklyn Academy of Music
To see Suleika Jaouad
Fellow AML survivor and
Journal writer who is
Undergoing her third round of treatment and is
Currently on the New York stop of her book tour

It wasn’t until I was sitting down in my seat
That it occurred to me
BAM was the place where I had my first job post-cancer
I didn’t work there for long
I had gone back to work too soon
I didn’t have the stamina to make it through a shift
But I was desperate to get back to normal
I had to ask for permission to sit down during the show
Another usher saw me and scolded,
“We’re not allowed to sit.”
I wanted to say
“I just had cancer.
I had a transplant.
I can’t stand for long periods.”
Instead I pretended I hadn’t heard her and
Fought back tears.

And now I’m nearly 11 years out.
How did I get so lucky to be here?
When Ruth is gone?
When Miguel is gone?
When Katy is gone?
When Miren is gone?
When Suleika has relapsed twice and is likely to be in treatment for the rest of her life?
Watching her standing up on that stage
Looking absolutely radiant in a bright and colorful dress with a thin gold belt
Her pixie hair sleek against her head
Reading her extraordinary words about fear of mice and cancer and treatment
While her husband, Jon Batiste
Played on the piano behind her
The love between them
The way they seem so grounded
So in touch
So in love

It broke my heart a little
The longing for a creative, spiritual, loving partner
Someone
To traipse across this mortal coil with
The heartbreak of tasting it
And having it taken away
Because I’m not enough?
Because it’s not the right time?
Because of so many factors out of my control
The fear of relapse
The fear of being ok
The fear of having what you want
The fear that you will never fulfill your dreams
Reach your potential
Do the thing you came here to do because
Illness
Pandemic
Politics
Global warming

And it wasn’t until I was on the train home
That I realized that I’d spent the day at camp
(The place where I was diagnosed)
And not once thought about getting sick
I was too busy being excited about the summer to come
Thinking about my to do list
Chatting with the new campers

The day was full of synchronicity
Old camp friends messaging out of the blue as I arrived at camp
Being at camp on the day of Suleika’s New York book tour
The New York stop being at BAM
On a rainy day  
​At the end of April 
Something magical 
Alchemy
From the French, Latin, Greek, and Arabic 
"The pursuit of the transmutation of baser metals into gold,
Search for the universal solvent and the panacea."

The warmth of lit beeswax candles
Single flames burn brightly atop
Tall and skinny, gold and yellow stems
Standing in white sand
Aesthetically pleasing, and fire safe
The front of the altar is lined with silver foil
The priest swings a thurible and the
Sweet smell of incense
Fills the air
A cantor with a rich tenor voice
Sings to a bass drone
To quote Mr Minchin
The music is nice, but the lyrics are dodgy
People gathering
On a Sunday

​Walking to Hudson Yards
On a chilly New York evening 
Turning the corner
And being surprised 
By a festival of fairy lights
The trees all decked out with miniature bulbs 
The walls of the mall glittering golden light and 
Miniature hot air balloons rising out of the concourse
And around the corner
An installation of light bulbs and wood
Fashioned to look like a bonfire 
The delight of places for people to sit
And eat
And watch

When a stranger
Offers hope 
And lifts your spirits ​

As we head into the dark
We must find the light(s)