The boy comes home for the weekend. A bad week, he tells me (his first words to me every weekend). This time, he’s been down with a cold all week, and they forced him to attend classes and workshops anyway. Compassion’s at a premium with me right now because I’ve been going into work sick for as long as I can remember. That’s A. B: I’m trying to figure out how I’ll bring in enough money to pay the taxes on my work (no, I won’t try to explain, death and taxes are boring topics anyway unless you’re making a mint on kill ’em all war games – video or real time).

Why I read so many unpopular authors may explain why my own writing doesn’t bring agents rushing at me in a feeding frenzy. Wieslaw Mysliwski, huh? Ryszard Kapuscinski, Hanna Krall, oh yeah, huh-huh. Asli Erdogan…hold on…something about Turkey, she’s in jail, right? And I keep harping about signing a petition for her release as if petitions meant anything anymore. We’re in the Post-Truth Era, remember? Someone or other decreed it, so it must be true, or wait, post-true I suppose.

Now, these unpopular writers – by unpopular, I mean they never made The New York Times’ best-seller lists – write about unpopular topics such as dismal dental hygiene in post-war Poland, or mind and body-destroying times in Turkish detention centers*.  Not the sexiest of topics, so true. The world is full of post-horrors, please give us Tinseltown for a change, or another go at powerless, mind-numbing idiocy. The kind that keeps the presses churning.

I’ll be in rehearsal this morning, singing tonight, and tomorrow night too. I don’t know how the miracle happens but even when I sneeze all the way through rehearsal, I make it through the performances.

Compassion being at a premium right now, I turned down another boy’s urgent plea to come over for a visit this afternoon. If he were still in his country of origin, he would write grammar-free emails announcing I’m the lucky heiress to a deceased tribal chief, so please send  your bank account number immediately.  Well, sorry my boy, I’m a tough old hen in this post-truth era, you’ll have to try your luck elsewhere. You get to gyp me once, not twice.

P.S. They fixed the leak upstairs. I have water again. I’ll go boil some up, stick a towel over my head, and breathe hot steam into my nostrils. Then, I’ll read a selection of Hanna Krall’s writings gathered under the title Six nuances de blanc **(Six shades of white). I may even manage to get a paragraph of new writing out of the old hen – or maybe I’ll settle for a decent sentence. You see, with no frenzied agents tearing my front door to shreds, I get to enjoy the privileges of unpopularity.

*Asli Erdogan, Le bâtiment de pierre, récits traduits du turc par Jean Descat, Actes Sud, 2013

**In Ryszard Kapuscinski & Hanna Krall La mer dans une goutte d’eau, les éditions Noir sur Blanc, 2016