Recently a friend and I have been discussing writers’ and artists’ journals and diaries. It prompted me to go back and read some of my own, since I’ve kept a journal of sorts through most of my life. Here are some excerpts from two months in 1997. I was 45 at the time and living in Vermont. The pencil drawing above was done today.
February 1997
A comforting thought: when I DO read someone else’s journal, esp. Merton’s, I can see that they too struggle with the whole notion of ego as it is embodied in the particular form that is journal-writing. He gets disgusted just as I do, threatens to (and did, apparently) tear out pages and throw them away, finds, at times, the whole thing embarrassing and trivial and poorly written and full of sniveling navel-staring. Yet for some reason we keep on, I think more than anything because it allows this particular type of person to organize their thoughts. I used to think that I would use the journal as the basis for other writings. I don’t know if that will ever be the case — this may be it. And possibly no one will ever think it is interesting enough to read it through. But to say it is written solely for my own eyes is deceptive. It IS intended to be read, and although I try to be as free as I can in what I express, there is always the sense that I will not be able to edit it myself; that someday it will exist as a record of me. It’s an interesting scenario, and one that I might as well ignore and just get on with the writing.
September 1997
On Labor Day we finally woke up to a day free from obligations, which we could spend reading the Sunday Times (Lady Di had just died in Paris), making some nice food, going to a movie (“Air Force One,” at the Town Hall Theater in Woodstock).
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Someday someone will write about e-mail being the death of letters, if they haven’t already, but will they also write about it as the death of journals? I have pages and pages of e-mail correspondence from this year, but the idea of collecting it, organizing it, putting it into Word files, and printing it makes me faint with fatigue. But I am sad at the thought of losing a whole year’s worth of thoughts and reflections. I find myself wondering if the form itself, though, breeds a kind of terse, abbreviated writing which lacks depth and substance. I know I try to write well no matter what the medium — a postcard even — but how much am I leaving out by the lack of a journal discipline, and the total lack of what any literarily-minded person could call “letters”. The other day I received a long message — letter — from P.Z. about the birth and first month of his daughter’s life. It was wonderful. But I find myself missing the fat envelope, the anticipation of carrying something with real weight home from the post office and opening it up to find someone’s actual handwriting — written, no less, to ME. And I find myself somewhat ashamed and saddened to notice how quickly I have given it all up myself — and thus deprived my closest friends and family of the same pleasure.
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October 2
At lunch yesterday Mounir said, “Isn’t it odd, how when we get old we want things to be the way they were when we were children. I woke up in the night feeling too hot, and I started thinking about how in Syria we used to sleep under just one cover — it was a padded thing — what do you call it? — right, a quilt, and under it there would be a sheet and on top of it a very thin layer of cloth. When they wanted to wash it they took it apart — it was sewn on the edges — and washed it. I can see my mother spreading it out on the floor — on the rug — with the sheet underneath and this other material on top, and then we would all help by getting around the edges and taking a big needle and sewing the layers together on the edges. Funny how you think of these things.”
October 3
Cold, grey and rainy today. By contrast, yesterday was brilliantly blue with the fall colors just starting toward their peak. In the afternoon the skies became that heavy leaden color and the trees stood out even more against it. Jonathan went skiing.
October 19
News of the world: a Vermont woman who has crusaded against land mines won the Nobel Peace Prize. Clinton is being investigated ad nauseam for his fund-raising practices. It just came out that John Kennedy negotiated a deal with Khrushchev to end the Cuban missile crisis - our missiles in Turkey for theirs in Cuba. Only seven people knew, and not one of them told. Orel Hershiser lost the first game of the World Series (we didn’t watch).
After several nights of frost, the trees have lost their brilliance and the hillsides have all become of a piece again — that muted late-fall tapestry I like so much. Walking across the bridge this afternoon I noticed the dusty blue stems of one of the swamp trees — I don’t know its name — and that they were the same color as the water and the sky. When you rub the stems they become dark maroon under the silvery blue.
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