I am turning into a bad friend and daughter. Unsent letters, cards, gifts. These promises from some past Phil, writing urgently, every word shook loose by the tremors of memory and love. Writing was (not so long ago!) a romantic act. The love for those occasions in the everyday when something beautiful reveals itself, despite the iniquity, the inequity, of life.

The present Phil does not write out of love, out of desperate observation of her environment, in the attempt to save herself. Rather she spends her days nose to book, sniffing clues, forming ideas, writing bad prose. She is required to write a lot of it, thousands of poorly strung words, which she will whittle down into something resembling a chapter, to add to other so-called chapters into the form of a thesis. She squints at this "product" (ugly word!), this Frankenstein put together from this and that, and it speaks to her in its ugly tongue. To write like this is to grope in the darkness into even more darkness, illuminated by rare flames snuffed out by more questions.

So many more months of this! I am at once nauseous and excited. But! But! But! I want to be a good friend and daughter again.

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