Blank

December 14, 2020

Coco & Vera - ASOS coat, Wilfred sweater, Jonak mulesCoco & Vera - Mejuri earrings, ASOS coat, Chanel handbagCoco & Vera - Mango sunglasses, Mejuri earrings, ASOS coatCoco & Vera - Mavi jeans, Jonak mules, Chanel handbagCoco & Vera - Mavi jeans, ASOS coat, Wilfred sweaterASOS coat
Wilfred sweater (similar)
Mavi jeans (c/o)
Jonak mules (similar)
Chanel handbag
Mango sunglasses
Stella & Dot rings
Mejuri earrings (c/o) (similar)
Location: Winnipeg Clinic – Winnipeg, Manitoba

It’s official: we’ve made it to the last two and a half weeks of 2020. This year started with such a feeling of possibility, at least for me. (Or maybe I just see possibility, looking back, because I know now what impossibility really looks like.) But as it draws to a close, I admit that I’m feeling a bit blank. When I sit down twice weekly to write to you all, I struggle to know what to say. There is little new ground to cover when it comes to the pandemic, and beyond that, Coco & Vera is not a news website. While I feel like I’ve taken introductory courses in epidemiology and virology this year, neither is a subject for which I feel any passion. In fact, I’ll be grateful when I can forget most of what I’ve learned in 2020.

The problem is, I find myself with little to do beyond regurgitate the latest news. I have no news of my own, after all – the furthest I’ve been from home since mid-November is the neighbourhood liquor store, which is about twenty feet from the neighbourhood grocery store that I frequent twice weekly. (When you eat as many vegetables as I do, two trips a week is necessary – broccoli just does not last that long.) My life is, essentially, blank.

It’s true that 2020 is the year when I took up painting again after years away from it, but there isn’t much to report. Some days I paint, some days I don’t. It’s also true that I continue to work on finshing my third book, but again, there is little to say on the subject apart from the fact that I have not taken nearly as much advantage of all the extra time that a lack of social engagements gives to make real progress. (Publication in 2022, at this point, seems as close to realistic as anything.)

These days, I spend most of my non-work-time exercising and reading The New Yorker, which I recently subscribed to out of interest. Mail delivery is slower than ever, so the issues often arrive weeks late. But reading the news in print, in 2020, is so much more about the writing than about the news itself that I suppose it doesn’t really matter. I continue to buy clothes for a future life that I hope I’ll be able to eventually live. But the prospect of being out of lockdown before early March seems unlikely at this point.

Some days, when I sit down to write to you all, I contemplate the relevance of anything I might have to say. There is so much more pressing news in the world than mine. And what I have to share is hardly news. Like everyone else, I’m now looking back on nearly ten months of lost time. Ten months of birthdays not celebrated, holidays not taken and memories not made. That’s what I mean, when I say that my life is blank. There was so much I wanted to do, but did not, or could not. And when I reflect on the year that is quickly coming to a close, all I can see is a vast, empty calendar. I badly wanted to fill it in, but desire, this year, was not enough.

I have hope for 2020. With that said, I know that the first day of the new year won’t bring about an immediate positive change. If it does, I’ll put on sequins and dance with joy, of course. But when it doesn’t, I’ll still be here. Even if my life remains small, narrow and a little bit blank. We need to hold onto what we can, to what we love now more than ever, and to the memory of what was – because it gives us hope that what was can be again.

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1 comments so far.

One response to “Blank”

  1. Courtney says:

    I’m not at all convinced 2021 will be any better than 2020 (maybe just horrible in different ways?) but at least it’s movement and forward momentum and, at this point, I’ll take it.

    Courtney ~ Sartorial Sidelines

Cee Fardoe is a thirty-something Canadian blogger who splits her time between Winnipeg and Paris. She is a voracious reader, avid tea-drinker, insatiable wanderer and fashion lover who prefers to dress in black, white and gray.

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