I buy notebooks. I am like Imelda Marcos and shoes, or Rudy Giuliani and fountain pens (no comment). I can’t help myself. The blank pages represent, as you say, my dear sister, infinite potential. Which is the problem. I am neither artist nor calligrapher; I am no poet. If my first mark is unworthy of the quality of the paper or the beauty of the binding, what then? I would have to discard the whole thing at once.

But @dLeonhardt, whose podcast The Argument is always entertaining and often inspiring, recommended that we all keep a journal during these historically important (and incomprehensible) times. So I have mustered the courage to put pen to paper. If, looking back, I can make better sense of what happened, the aesthetics will surely not matter.