Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Through the Rain . . .


I started packing last night. It was a strangely upsetting and ultimately cathartic experience; there were times when I looked at everything I had and wanted to throw in the towel, and other times it felt freeing to pack things away and look at empty shelves. Every full box seemed a tiny victory.

I tackled books last night, first on my packing list. There are three shelves in my living room full of my books (alone with others scattered throughout the house); my sister's books make up less than a quarter of all the books we have. I started by eliminating books I knew I didn't need and would never read again, leaving them for my sister and A to do whatever they wanted with them. Then, I started packing what was left. Eleven boxes later, 80% of my books are packed.

As I was going through the books, I found one of my journals from my college years. I don't normally keep journals; over the years I have tried, but I was never faithful in my entries. But, this journal was from the year I lived alone. The year everything went south, and I broke down. The Bad Year. I found myself paging through it, reading things here and there, marvelling at times over how ridiculously pompous I sounded; I tried so hard to sound grown up and rather antiquated back then. Then, I found the entry from the Bad Night, the night I went crazy, the night that was a watershed for me, that showed me I could not crawl out of the hole I was in without help. It was scary reading that entry, remembering how I was feeling, though it was like seeing it through a pane of rain-covered glass, no longer distinct. Even my handwriting throughout that entry changed, starting out my regular, ordered cursive, and slowly devolving the more upset I became. Reading that snippet of memory was eye-opening; I have come a long way since that night, and I am in many ways a truly different person now. But I am also still the same in many ways, still alone, still emotionally needy with a tendency to cling too much, still repulsive to most men while at the same time being pretty frightened of them. I can't say I liked revisting those entries, but I suppose I needed to. It showed me how far I've come and how far I still need to go.

It was a little exhausting packing last night, physically and emotionally, and there's still so much to go. Let's hope it isn't all this tough.


What about you, dear readers? If someone were to find them long after you were gone, what would your old journals say about you?

 

4 comments:

L. Edgar Otto said...

Seamstress, I just posted this poem and just wrote it then I saw your post and it seem to fit:

Cosmic Latte L. Edgar Otto Aug. 3, 2010

I'm sitting by the river on a muggy day
where I wrote so many of my lost poems
My second time fallen through the snakes
in the street, the morning dew heavy for my eyes

I am like the young playwright, Shakespeare
in a parallel universe living off the original poet
To solve a glitch in a paradox of traveling time
I would feel but a shadow of those poems
Plagiarizing myself if I could recall them
but even then the manuscript is lost to the cosmic latte

I recall reading them out loud to the morning's wildlife
Drops of tears on paper, gentle rain under the cottonwood

* * *

ThePeSla

L. Edgar Otto said...

I forgot some lines, sorry

Cosmic Latte L. Edgar Otto Aug. 3, 2010

I'm sitting by the river on a muggy day
where I wrote so many of my lost poems
My second time fallen through the snakes
Phoenix again to climb the ladders
in the street, the morning dew heavy for my eyes
Inky running water colors

I am like the young playwright, Shakespeare
in a parallel universe living off the original poet
To solve a glitch in a paradox of traveling time
I would feel but a shadow of those poems
Plagiarizing myself if I could recall them
but even then the manuscript is lost to the cosmic latte

I recall reading them out loud to the morning's wildlife
Drops of tears on paper, gentle rain under the cottonwood

* * * Good luck on your travels, of course you keep a journal and I found it good therapy as long as it does not detract from love and life.

Margaret and Andrew said...

I had a journal I kept high school through college.
i burned it

Yep I did. so that noone could ever read it

Steven said...

They would think I was a raving lunatic. LOL

Well maybe not, but I was a confused young man searching for the meaning of everything, searching for himself and trying to find his place in the world. It was all so long ago and so much has changed.

It's good to go read those journals every now and then. It's a good reminder of how far we've come and how hard we worked to get here. The evolution of our personal life is a precious thing. Everything we've ever experienced is what has brought us to this moment in time, and it's this moment in time that's most important.