THE JOURNEY'S THE THING

Jardine presents a collection of essays she wrote during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In late spring 2020, after months of isolation in her small Upper West Side apartment in Manhattan, the author decided to “pursue a repetitive creative activity.” She would write 50 essays—one per week—as a celebration of the final year before she turned 50 years of age. Raised in Toronto, Jardine had moved to New York six years ago. In an early piece, she describes her decision to remain in the place she now called home as other people fled the city. Despite the eerie quiet that embraced New York—except for the sounds of occasional ambulances and helicopters—there had been “shattering moments of beauty and community,” including evening choruses of pots and pans announcing residents’ determination to survive. Each essay focuses on an aspect of Jardine’s mental or physical routines, or an event or object, past or present, that had personal significance to her. She expands upon each essay’s initial concept, weaving in intriguing autobiographical tidbits. The diverse works include musings over the spontaneous shattering of a treasured French-press coffee pot, and an examination of an unexpected week of exhaustion: “an epic weariness that suppresses clarity of thought and purpose.” Jardine is a lawyer and a university guest lecturer, and her prose reflects the skillful language of these fields, although on occasion, she gives in to verbosity. She twists each philosophical puzzle this way and that—examining the difference between joy and happiness, or the nature of excitement and fear surrounding inevitable change—much like a professor following tangents and leading a class to a pithy conclusion. An inveterate list-maker with a restless psyche, Jardine ably brings readers along on her week-by-week journey as she seeks greater self-knowledge and inner calm during a time of chaos. Along the way, she imparts some valuable advice: set priorities, as not everything is critical, and pay close attention to the here and now.

A thoughtful set of works with moments of wisdom.