I want, very badly, for this journal to be about my journey and my journey alone.
After all, this is mine. This is selfish writing, writing in which I record my thoughts and feelings and experiences.
But there are other people who are integral parts of the story, and people who are quickly growing more important to me. And I don't want to compromise their privacy; the price of knowing and loving me should not be having your life exposed to an audience of people who may or may not know you, who may or may not care, who may judge your actions because of what I write about them. And I don't want to use the journal to write about things that are bothering me that I'm afraid to actually bring to the people involved--or to write about my joys and neglect to bring them, too. It's hard for me, much of the time, to communicate verbally what I have in my heart; my words skip and stutter, I have sudden panics about whether the other person is going to like me after I say what I have to say. am I too intense? too laid-back? am I what is wanted? am I what is needed?
Writing, I can say what I want to say without the fear. I can pretend I am speaking to the paper or to the keyboard and quash that fear outright. I have, on the Mac hard drive, collections of letters and emails that I've saved, many of them which I never sent. I write in order to clarify to myself what I'm thinking, to slow down the thoughts enough that I can understand them. When I write and read my feelings back to myself, I often find things that I'm missing or make a realization about what's really causing my feelings.
I remember a night when something incredibly upsetting to me was mentioned in passing to me, by a boy who had woken me up as he climbed into bed with me. "Oh, by the way..." He then fell asleep as I woke slowly, as I do when I've been dreaming. I was furious. I was terrified. I was not about to wake him up and talk with him about it in a friend's living room. So I got out of bed, grabbed my notebook and wrote. I wrote with tears stinging in my eyes that I couldn't afford to let fall. I wrote and wrote until my hand felt like it was going to fall off. I wrote stream-of-conciousness accusations and cries of panic. I wrote everything that was on my mind and in my heart, just dumping everything out on the page. I contemplated leaving, taking the first bus home, but decided that they would worry about me if I disappeared. It was three AM. I fell asleep there on the floor with my head on my notebook, cold and unwilling to go back to bed with the person I was so angry at.
We talked about it later, when I was calmer; I still have the six pages I wrote as mute evidence that it happened, that I was so terrified and fucked-up and confused that I stayed when I should have just walked. I have it as evidence of the rage I swallowed.
And as a warning to myself that writing is no substitute for talking.
In this journal, I try to err on the side of caution; if I don't know if someone will be comfortable being written about publicly, I don't, even under a pseudonym. This gets harder the more of my life is involved with other people; the more family I have, the more my life is interwoven with other people, the more I feel restricted in the stories I tell publicly. Even if I cast those I write about in the best possible light, it's an exposure; while I'm perfectly willing to be written about, I know that other people may not be.
And, frankly, I don't want to get it wrong. My memory is still not the best, and when writing I often cast things in my own peculiar light. My perceptions might not match with someone else's.
I'll never run out of material. It may be time to shift the focus, though.
The other night, walking from work to my car, I noticed herons in the trees across the canal.It was drizzling lightly, the overcast sky blue with sundown, the trees stark black against the sky. I stood and watched. Spread before me were fallen leaves, a green-gold tumbled blanket on the banks of the water. The water itself held the reflection of the sky, troubled by raindrops; under my big black umbrella I started out over the water, at the flock of herons that had alighted in the dark trees.
I could hear them creak at each other, saw one of them shake its head and fluff its feathers. Graceful necks in dark silhouette, the last of the leaves falling onto the water, the asphalt path and the smell of rain. The world was damp, a cool touch on the back of my hand, the prick of drizzle on my face as I closed my umbrella.
There is no meaning I can assign to herons in trees in damp twilight. No realizations except an open-eyed wonderment at beauty; that there is this world and I am here to see and participate in it.
Nov 22, 1999 18:05 from **** My Baby Jesus can beat up your Baby Jesus. [Talk Show> msg #89804
Best reason to buy index cards:
So you can play a game.
how goes the war?
have rice milk, will travel.
