I'm still reading Starting Out in the Evening by Brian Morton and I've come to a passage that really makes me think. Seventy-one-year-old writer Leonard Schiller is out to dinner with Heather Wolfe, the young woman who is writing her college thesis about Schiller's work. It's actually Heather's 25th birthday and that causes Schiller to wonder what he was doing on his own 25th birthday.
He could only guess. He'd never kept a diary, so he couldn't check. His parents were dead, Molly [the woman he was dating at the time] was unfindable; so Schiller was alone. And since he couldn't remember that day, the day was gone, as if everyone who'd been alive in it, including himself, was dead.
I don't know about you, but I tend to think about the passage of time the same way--if I can't account for it, it's gone, but if I can account for it, it feels like it counted for something. Of course, I know that this isn't always true since it would be impossible to remember and account for every day of our lives, but I would like to be able to account for more of them.
During high school, one of my teachers made us keep a journal. We wrote in it during class. I still have it and every few years, I flip through it and re-live a brief period of high school. It helps me to remember that the good ole' days weren't always good, as Billy Joel once sang. But more than anything, it helps me to remember specifics that would otherwise be gone forever.
A couple of years ago I started a journal, but I was hit and miss with it at best. I sort of see this blog as a journal. But it doesn't chronicle what I do as much as it captures what I was thinking about at the time. But, of course, blogs have limitations. So, I'm toying with the idea of starting a journal again. I doubt if I'll keep it up, but I'd also hate to feel the way Schiller did one day in the distant future.
