I have in my house stacks of things I have written. Hidden in the closet are journals that I am pretty sure I need to throw away. They are epistles of ire and wrath and sorrow. They will do no one any good if they are read.
Yet I cannot bring myself to toss them without looking at them, in case there is some jewel of a line stuck in amongst the tirades. And since I haven't that kind of time, they don't get tossed.
I thought today to post a poem, so I looked through my "poetry" folder on my computer. Is this all there is? I wondered as I glanced at the files. It is all that is on the computer, anyway. But there is a file labeled "poetry" full of words - words I know I will never publish and which will never see the light of day unless I look at them - in the filing cabinet. A hard copy of my amateur efforts to write like the masters, these poems are bittersweet and pretty terrible. The better poems are on the computer, and there are not many of those.
The folder needs to be thrown away; all of those words, once agonized over, will never lead to anything meaningful. And yet I cannot bring myself to toss it away.
What is this need, this desire to hang on to these little scraps of soul? I don't need them, for sure. I am no longer that person. That person has grown up, and turned into ... well, me. I could no more write the words I wrote in 1988 as the person in 1988 could write these words today. Time has bent forward, and I have gone with it, growing, changing, creating and moving deeper in and then out again. Ebbing, flowing, like a tide trapped by the beams of the moon, I move on.
It's like a dance with myself - a step forward, a half-step back. I gain ground, sometimes in large strides, only to look backwards at where I have been. I cannot retrace my steps. I cannot go backwards. I could end up in the same place but the journey would change me.
The pond water lies calm, but toss in a pebble, and it churns. The water may grow smooth again, but it is changed forever.* A journal may hold words that were true at the time, but are they true today, or has change made them lies?
*I swiped that bit about the pond from the last scene of a Xena: Warrior Princess episode, Dreamworker.
I am a believer in keeping journals. Like yours, mine are often exercises in madness, a place where I get out much of the insanity of life, leaving sanity for the rest of the world to come in contact with. I've often thought anyone reading them would think me a madman. Yet, it is good to go back sometimes and read them, to remind myself that much is good and that I've come through those times of wrath and self beating up to where most of my life actually is... a place of grace and joy. They are also a reminder of the journey, that step forward step back process you speak of, and sometimes, when we are stalled out, a reminder of the progress, and the nature of that progress, is good. So I'd vote to keep them. Of course, it does play havoc with storage after a while. That's a problem I can absoutely relate to!
ReplyDeleteTom - I guess my concern isn't so much having them *now* as having someone read them after I'm gone. Maybe I could put them in a box and tag it "throw away unopened and unread" and hope my executor follows my directions!
ReplyDeleteI could never throw mine out. My 10th grade diary is hilariously dull but it's part of the record. So is my BAD poetry. I did rip out on page in my diary that I didn't want to go down in history.
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