That’s more than
35 years ago.
Granted we’re not
talking about daily journal-writing for 35 years, or 23,000 days, give or take.
But I don’t let
any of it go. Once written in a journal (ringed-paper variety these days for
ease of flat-surface writing) the treasure is kept on a shelf in my home
studio.
In that workspace I’m
literally surrounded by pages and pages of cursive writing.
As I mine material
for a new memoir I find myself re-reading journals.
Dipping into the
past I see the younger me, desire for connection, observations from the
surprising to the mundane.
Themes emerge,
passions, some lost, some still budding.
I’m in a subway
car as I write this. (I transcribe – and edit corrections – of my
journal-writing in this space). I use a carefully chosen black ink craftsman
pen.
Each letter is
owned, idiosyncratically mine.
At times a face in
the crowd attracts my attention and I pause with a few strokes on paper,
capture something about that person, a mood, with the simple goal of showing
one defining feature.
The sketch, with
accompanying script, makes a distinguishing mark on that brief occasion, both
about the subject and me.
Max Ferber, a
fictional character in Sebald’s “The Emigrants,” says, “Time is nothing but the
disquiet of the soul.”
Maybe that is what
I’ve done in this half-lifetime of journal-writing. Put in words, in this most
modest way, an account of the disquiet of the soul.
Next: Running for Your Life: Ant Heel
