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June 11, 2003
The Ubiquitous Journal
I carried a journal with me throughout high school. Typically, I used a regular marble notebook and decorated the cover, punched a hole in the front and back, and attached a shoelace or ribbon so that I could tie it closed. With few exceptions, I rarely wrote very private things. Instead, I recorded what I saw, doodled, peeled stickers off of things and stuck them on the pages, and pretty much tried to collect as much of what I encountered in a given day so that I could preserve my experience. I've always been afraid that I might forget parts of the past. These journals served as my attempt to keep them all organized and intact.
Every so often I like to pull them out from the bottom of my bookshelf for a good leafing. Sometimes I'm transported back into another lifetime...sometimes I can't remember what possesed me to save something, to write that particular poem or draw that specific doodle.
I used to think that if I read them frequently enough, I'd never lose that sense of childhood. But I guess age is inevitable, and as we grow our memories of and perspectives on life moments are transformed, even if we don't want them to.
Time is such a strange thing.
Posted by callalillie at June 11, 2003 8:11 PM |
Wow!
i always wondered what the hell you put inside those journals. thats great. i don't know if you have a scanner, but you can borrow mine to digitize the whoel thing. i would love to leaf through them too!!
sean
Posted by: Sean at June 11, 2003 11:02 PM
actually, i did have a few of them digitized while in college-- not as simple scans but more like image maps that allowed you to zoom into certain sections. it was for an edtech class and i wound up using a kids progam to do it (i should have used the web, but at the time i didn't quite know how), which was dumb b/c now i can neither use nor find the program that i wrote.
anywho...yes, at some point i will digitize parts of them. there are upwards of 12 or so...so until then you'll just have to visit brooklyn and see them in person.
Posted by: callalillie at June 12, 2003 7:27 AM
Ah; I didn't start journal-keeping until I was in my twenties, and rarely included my own artwork. I think I'm up to 118 books, plus at least a half-dozen pressboard binders of computer printouts.
It's often a surprise to go back and read what I wrote about an event, and then to compare it to the memory that I now have. (Sometimes frightening.)
Posted by: Velma at June 12, 2003 10:34 AM
The keeping of youth based journals is the sub-plotted (yeah, I made up a word -- deal) basis of a book I have been writing (and not writing) for the last 2-3 years, partially derived from the young ms. Corie forie herself. The idea is that the narrator has always wrote everything down in order to remember things experianced, and the novel book itself is revealed through those other "books" realized at the end when the narrator discovers their collection while packing up to move to another city. Working title: The Chimera with Jake. However, I must complete another short story of fiction that I want to submit to chicago based publications called "The Poetry of Kansas Song Soap Operas" -- what do you think of that title? Though, my focus should really be carreer oriented. I have been graduated for 2 years now and have been serving/bartending during that time and I feel I am wasting away my life. If that carreer does not come, I am moving back to NY for no other reason than that, I have already renewed for a short term lease that ends feb 21st, I think. Also, there is a short story contest coming up and I think I will submit either "Centerpeace" or Michele can go Foucalt himself" which do you prefer?
That's my tangent for the day.
J.
Posted by: Jason at June 12, 2003 2:46 PM
Hmmm. Kind of hard to judge a title without a context. Is the short story a modified version of The Chimera with Jake. What's a "chimera"?
Posted by: callalillie at June 13, 2003 12:02 PM
