That there is time. I doggedly prioritise and pursue tasks, and the day seems to open out and everything does get done. Chill.

Before I was diagnosed with esophageal cancer a year and a half ago, I rather jauntily told the readers of my memoirs that when faced with extinction I wanted to be fully conscious and awake, in order to “do” death in the active and not the passive sense. And I do, still, try to nurture that little flame of curiosity and defiance: willing to play out the string to the end and wishing to be spared nothing that properly belongs to a life span. However, one thing that grave illness does is to make you examine familiar principles and seemingly reliable sayings. And there’s one that I find I am not saying with quite the same conviction as I once used to: In particular, I have slightly stopped issuing the announcement that “Whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.”

That I am not wise.

But cancer has also ushered in new ways of being alive. Even when I am this distant from Canadian family and friends, everything feels as if it is painted in bright colors. In my vulnerability, I am seeing my world without the Instagrammed filter of breezy certainties and perfectible moments. I can’t help noticing the brittleness of the walls that keep most people fed, sheltered and whole. I find myself returning to the same thoughts again and again: Life is so beautiful. Life is so hard.

An Elizabeth Peyton painting.

Two weeks before shooting – after some of our financing dropped out – when the producers said I had to cut a week’s worth of scenes out of my script. I was on location and away from my daughters [currently in middle and high school] who I felt were needing a mother.

To a girl we were mean to in first grade.

Driving my convertible over the Bay Bridge when I was 18, listening to Thinking of You by Sister Sledge.

Being hard on myself. I don’t want to pass that on to my daughters, so I’m trying to stop.

Making films exactly how I wanted.