Something else: Writing in the journal did not have the steadying or consoling power I’d hoped for. It did not soothe me. It frustrated me instead. It made me feel dumb. Dumb and hopeless. It filled me with anxiety: what a terrible writer I had become.

What if all this time we have misunderstood the story of the Tower of Babel? My ex once put the question in an essay. Behold the people is one, and they all have one language. Said God, This will not do. As one, the people might actually succeed in building the city and the heavenward tower with which they hoped to make their name. Indeed, the All-Knowing knew that, with a common tongue, nothing would be impossible for them. The way to stop this abomination was to replace the one language with many. And so it was done.

But what if God had in fact gone even further. What if it was not just to different tribes but to each individual human being that a separate language was given, unique as fingerprints. And, step two, to make life among humans even more strifeful and confounding, he beclouded their perception of this. So that while we might understand that there are many peoples speaking many different languages, we are fooled into thinking that everyone in our own tribe speaks the same language we do.

This would explain much of human suffering, according to my ex, who was being less playful than you might think. He really did believe that’s how it was: each of us languaging on, our meaning clear to ourselves but to nobody else.

Even people in love? I asked, smilingly, teasingly, hopefully. This was at the very beginning of our relationship. He only smiled back. But years later, at the bitter end, came the bitter answer: People in love most of all.

—

I once heard a journalist say that whenever he’s working on a piece, he knows his language probably isn’t clear when he finds himself repeatedly cleaning the computer screen.

Bringing to mind Orwell’s ideal of prose as clean and clear as a windowpane.

Look out the window, goes the schoolteacher’s writing prompt. What do you see?

When I looked out the window, the monster was still there.

—

I have not, so far, regretted not having kept the journal, though I suppose one day I might. On the other hand, I find myself thinking about a film called No Home Movie, in which the Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman documented conversations with her mother during the last months of her mother’s life. We should all be great filmmakers.