In the midst of this flooding of fear and preparation and grief for things that haven’t even yet occurred there is the reality- that I wake up, eat breakfast, and live. Exist. Not thrive, exactly, but survive. That is the goal right now.

Clarice Lispector has been quietly reassuring me that slogging through the shit is normal, and that the burning in my veins, this quiet simmering of anger, is an aspect of being human. I read books about other times, the past, times that are not now. I quietly try to avoid the news. I prepare Christmas gifts of donations to organizations that will be helping people who become further disenfranchised or who need medical care or who have other challenges that will become larger as this horrendous transition of power takes place. 

I apply my lipstick and drink coffee and watch a parade of servicemen, marching for Remembrance Day here in Canada. I again mentally wish I was home for the millionth time, that I was able to be with people who feel the same thing. I almost cry thinking of my loved ones back home. I write the shoddy, weak beginnings of poems that will be honed and slowly fortified with the correct words. I am unable to do my research and writing at the same pace I was, as I feel like my brain is frozen to only a few subjects. This will fade and it must soon. 

There is a ginkgo tree on Yates street that delights me. It is so yellow, unabashedly so, and it charms me with it’s enthusiasm for the season, and seems unaffected by everything around it. The natural world does what it has always done- adapts and moves on. I envy the tidal pools I peer into as the sun goes down. I relish the soft feel of leaves in my hands, knowing the trees do not understand what is happening just across the strait in my home country. It began to rain, quietly at first, after I left the drugstore with a candle, a silly purchase but something about a flame in close quarters is comforting.

It all continues and we hold our heads high and love one another more fiercely than ever before.