Pieces from old journal entries. Themes: evasiveness, comments on heavy syntax, I-tried-to-write-but-didn’t. Intended only for the exceedingly bored.
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15/16 December 2008
It is only time that I write.
Only because I have nothing to abide and nothing to bide my mind as it seeks to be rational. (This is not entirely true. I certainly do have things to attend to, and one thing in particular, but I am forever looking for something else.)
I was reading a book and began to identify with one of the characters, the protagonist, a slight young woman with a proclivity for being unassertive and (yet?) theoretical. The book is written over 600-odd pages. I am only yet at the start.
Certainly this rambling means nothing in the scope of the world. I am hardly structuring my thoughts, and, aside from structure, which may not be always a pressing concern, I am scarcely giving thought to these thoughts, which, then, would hardly deserve their name as such.
If only to gain practice, I am writing.
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Monday / 13 July 2009
I am picking up the pen again, figuratively speaking, and will have another go at journaling. I certainly have not done much in the way of extraordinary things, and only those persons interested in minutiae and domesticities, or those persons blessed with great stamina, could stay awake for a reading of my life. My will power is on holiday; maybe this attempt at regular writing will persuade it to come back.
…
I am reading Franny and Zooey yet another time. I am able to read Salinger quickly, partly because I have read him many times, and partly because his thoughts are to some degree my own. But I might be flattering myself. It is better to say, possibly, that the thoughts he entertains are often similar to the ideas that loop-the-loop, not so sophisticatedly, inside my brain. Two of my friends, M. and K., have just become acquainted with the book. I am pleased to report that both of them have seemed to like it very much. I visit the book again and again, because it is comforting and enlightening and familiar. I think I know the precise couch in the precise living room into which Franny sniffles under blankets all the day long in part two of the pocket-size Little, Brown edition with the white cover. It sells for only $5.99 at the bookstore. (The book, not the couch.) Which reminds me to mention the rumor that Borders Books may be headed toward bankruptcy. I certainly hope that it doesn’t, but it would be naïve of me to deny that this economy is taking a terrible toll. And I can acknowledge this even with my horribly, horribly eclipsed understanding of economics and what it means to balance a bank account. (Does one balance a bank account? Or only a checkbook? I think it is both. Evidently I do neither, at least not very well.)
I sense that the above paragraph would have benefited from another sentence, clipped to the end, but my mind hasn’t the resourcefulness to come up with anything passably smart. In any case, I should be chatting online at the moment (through Skype) with the girls from school who form our unofficial Catholics Girls Book Club. We were going to be discussing the latter part of C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity, besides catching up. I haven’t read the book since last summer, and I would have done well to give it another, more reflective look. But, by happenstance, my wireless Internet connection disappeared in the moments before the appointed chat time, and has yet to return. I took it as a sign. I am not particularly fond of seeing myself on the web camera anyway, nor of having other people see me. I am not especially lovely-looking, after all.
I would like to write a poem, on I know not what. … I think I will try to write one now, sandwiched in the middle of this rambling journal entry (which what soul would ever read?). Here is my attempt.
O, flor of the flores!
What little heart doth beat inside?
The green-stem loop – a slender tail –
That bends into a silver pail
Where all the sorrows go.
The sun above is kissing thee,
Thy face is all aglow!
It is 10:18 post meridiem and my stomach is a little uneasy, though it is a good deal better than before, from when I quickly drank a smoothie and ran twice around a large grassy field. I write about small and silly things, I think. Who would want to look inside my mind, except to be assured of the surpassing originality of his own?
Yours sincerely,
Elizabeth
(Am I my own?)
P.S. I like this passage from Franny and Zooey:
“I know this much, is all,” Franny said. “If you’re a poet, you do something beautiful. I mean you’re supposed to leave something beautiful after you get off the page and everything. The ones you’re talking about don’t leave a single, solitary thing beautiful. All that maybe the slightly better ones do is sort of get inside your head and leave something there, but just because they do, just because they know how to leave something, it doesn’t have to be a poem…. It may just be some kind of terribly fascinating, syntaxy droppings – excuse the expression.”
Also – I would like to learn calligraphy. I saw my scraps of old paper (my old attempts), with pink lettering, poking out from beneath my bed, in my very messy room.
Also – I just revised the small poem, above. A few moments ago, the third and fourth lines read:
The green-stem loop – a slender life –
That bends into a potted place
and it is now 10:39 post meridiem. (I felt as though I should end with a period.)
(Or, better yet, an exclamation!)
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Monday / 02 November 2009
This is odd, I think, but nice, to be writing again. I just read over the horribly obtuse syntax of my most recent journal entry, which is unsurprisingly not very recent (it is November, the entry comes from July). I do not have terribly many updates to bring, as I have done little to pass the time in the long interim. I have fallen into another of my periodic depressions, and it is difficult to bring myself out. Yesterday (it is past midnight now, and I am exacting about technicalities) was Daylight Savings, and we gained an extra hour. I slept until past one o’clock in the afternoon; or, what would have been past two o’clock, the day prior. Afterwards, I piddled around, moving from my bed to the computer, typing and clicking and editing photographs until my head was gone missing. The day was pretty and the sun came dazzling through the slats of my window shade, so resembling, I’d remarked to my roommate, the bars of a prison cell. I am currently resisting the temptation to read the above-written, perhaps in an effort to fight against the vanity that so afflicts me; I don’t know whether it’s trifling to write this; but then, I shouldn’t write these entries with the intention that they will be read by eyes other than my own at some time as the days go by. On a related note, I think it would be healthy to look at myself in the mirror less frequently; doing so breeds bad feelings in the gut and a vacancy of thought. I do very little studying anymore, and I ought to occupy my mind with something other than weightless fancies, but weightless fancies are evidently the things I like to turn to best, despite the anguish they habitually incite. At church today (I did change from my pajamas, as the clock neared four), I was given a free copy of St. Thérèse of Lisieux’s The Story of a Soul. I have been meaning to read it. … I would like to begin a habit of going to daily Mass, as much as possible. My mind has a terrible habit of walking away during Mass, into familiar idle daydreams, but perhaps with my body in church, my heart will reside in a good place too. Presently I am putting off my schoolwork, comme d’habitude. I am thousands of miles behind in all that has been assigned this quarter, and this is just barely hyperbole. …
And, here, some verse from my Confirmation saint, a Doctor of the Church, St. Teresa of Ávila:
Si el amor que me tenéis
Si el amor que me tenéis,
Dios mío, es como el que os tengo,
decidme, ¿en qué me dentengo?
O Vos ¿en qué os detenéis?
–Alma, ¿qué quieres de mí?
–Dios mío, no más que verte.
–Y qué temes más de ti?
–Lo que más temo es perderte.
Un amor que ocupe os pido,
Dios mío, mi alma os tenga,
para hacer un dulce nido
adonde más la convenga.
Un alma en Dios escondida,
¿qué tiene que desear
sino amar y más amar
y en amor toda encendida
tornarte de nuevo a amar?
I am pathetic and pious, in an unfortunate, affected sort of way. I am also letting just about everyone in the world down. Where have I gotten to? Le sigh le sigh le sigh!
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Sunday / 08 November 2009
By my clock, it is now Sunday morning, which means I have missed out on composing an entry for the seventh, which is an unfortunate thing, seven being a very good number. I am wanting creativity, hopefully this exercise in writing will not be too dull-witted. … I am drinking water from a refilled plastic water bottle – I am not too eminently worried by the possibility of leached toxins, but it is on my mind, as that sort of worry which you keep because you are expected to keep it. I am curious about the company of strangers, but I don’t permit myself to be too affable, not out of a personal fear, typically, but because I know propriety, and my mother, would have me worry and act otherwise. Friday evening in the grocery store, for example, I was seated at a table and sipping soup. An older man at the table adjacent kept his eyes trained on my table and at length offered me a slice of a loaf of wheat bread he had bought. I declined, but thanked him. Later he offered me a cup of water; again I declined, but asked if he would like a cup himself. He showed me a giant soup container filled with clear liquid – it was his little subterfuge – and remarked how he liked girls real deep, and how he had two daughters of his own. Then, after some minutes, he came to my table bearing two small samples of pie; I said another thank-you and he said some words about the sweet lovingkindness that most girls have. I kept rather more silent than my desire to politely please would have asked of me, and rather more loquacious than my mother would have instructed me, but all in all the affair passed without much ado, though I am forever a person thrown to extremes and unhappily stubborn when told to inhabit that healthiest place called the middle ground.
I am so fickle in my moods. Leonard Bernstein’s music swings between extremes of emotion, because, his daughter explained, Leonard Bernstein felt everything so intensely. I enter into a habit of wondering whether I am emotionless or entirely too emotional; it is a slippery thing. If I can get into my head the picture of a little closet girl, pining behind a cupboard door, but even-tempered and fairly unmoved in the company of people and everyday goings-on – I can see sense in the thing. In my class on the lyric in 19th-century Britain, we have been reading selections from Christina Rossetti and Charlotte Smith and Elizabeth Barrett Browning; and I like all of these poets very much, and in some respects, and perhaps self-inflatingly, feel myself one and the same with them. I romanticize so much. I do fear I fall in love with ideals and, the scarier, idealizations.
…
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Tuesday / 19 January 2010
Naturally there has been a sizable gap between journal entries again. It is a difficult thing to continue the writing, but a good thing. I wonder how many of the good things on this earth are hard going? Probably many of them. I also wonder how far I buy into platitudes simply because they are oft-repeated. I am at the Highland Square Library (formerly called the West Hill branch) and writing at a long and otherwise empty table. … The bracelet on my wrist (I suppose I would not wear it elsewhere, but I like to overspecify) has an acronym: A.S.A.P., Always Say a Prayer. I imagine that some people would laugh at it, call it trite and too stinking of moralism, but I am fond of it. I wonder whether I become more reverent, wearing it. I have fallen sadly out of the habit of prayer since I have been home from school, which amounts to over a month, now. I miss praying the rosary most nights with other students, very kind people. I should like to begin praying it again, in a corner of my house, perhaps. At home I attend church on Sundays, but half the time I arrive late and harried and my mind is stuck on vain things throughout the Mass. This past Sunday was different: I came early, kneeled and said some prayers, and was sitting alone in a back pew. It was nice. It was at St. Bernard’s, downtown, which is really a lovely church. I know that one should not put too much emphasis on the church building, to the negligence of the church community or the church spirit; but physical location does influence me and the way I conduct my thoughts and feelings (to what extent does one conduct feelings? The answer to this could be useful). The same principle applies to my being at the library to write: a different environment, a different state of mind – or at least an easier time reaching a different state of mind. Sometimes I think I am halfway mad, but more honestly, I think I only pretend to half-madness, since the idea interests me (besides giving me an excuse to be scattered in my logic… and syntax). George Bernard Shaw abhorred the apostrophe, and did without on most occasions: dont for don’t and hes for he’s and shouldnt for shouldn’t. Perhaps I shall have to dally with this stylistic choice sometime; although I imagine Shaw might take offense at so light a word as “dally” being used in so grave a matter.
I suppose I should bring my things to the counter now, to check out; they are four CDs – Joshua Bell on violin, Hoagy Carmichael, Johnny Cash, Celtic Woman – and three DVDs – The Unseen Beatles (BBC), The Big Sleep (a classic), and The Chorus (Les Choristes, in French). I wonder how awful someone, reading this, would think my writing. I wonder a lot.
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Wednesday / 20 January 2009
It is the Eve of St. Agnes today. I should like to read more of Keats; I like the Romantics and their poetry, and uncapitalized romantic poetry, too; and I should probably swoon over the missives Keats penned to his love Fanny Brawne. …
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Tuesday / 09 March 2010
I have not written in a long while, of course. A number of things have happened – they are always happening, I suppose, but I never feel I have the courage or the recklessness or the authority to lay them down in words. I may try to, from here on out, but it is hard, because I must in the process convince myself that I am not acting the harsh and bitter and backhanded judge. I wrote earlier that I don’t want to play the critic, and this is true; and before, I trailed off without taking a plunge, which is what it is, I suppose, and now it will be the time to try again. … My right ear is clogged, I think, as if some shampoo settled inside it as I showered. It is not irksome so much as worrisome – and the worries escalate: I will be a lousy listener of music … I will lose my balance and won’t find grace. Yesterday I was told I worry too much. I do worry quite a lot, I suppose. I don’t know how far beyond average my worrying goes, though. It is difficult to say, considering that I cannot look into anyone’s head but mine, and the darkness in my own head is probably pretty thick, even cats would have trouble seeing through the gloom. Oh, it is not gloom, I suppose – I am only being cynical, and, really, it is not even sincere cynicism – more like a product of saying, this sounds nice, and taking the sound while leaving behind the sense. I fear this is something I do rather often. Nonsense is good, but I don’t know if I do it right, I don’t know whether Lewis Carroll would approve.
I am still wading in the shallow end, not taking the plunge as I said, but perhaps it is O.K. (“oll korrect!”) to evade a little more. I am sitting in bed, on my knees, and straight before me is the dresser mirror. My hair is wet, from the shower, and drawn into a ponytail, and I have on a black headband. I am wearing a black shirt – which I do nearly all the time, I must seem very drab or pseudo-chic (I used to pronounce the word “chick”) or depressed – and in fact it is my mother’s shirt, and I am wearing my brother’s khaki shorts, so it is in part a borrowed wardrobe. I don’t know how important it is to write these things – probably no one will care – but the details flesh out a day in retrospect and anyhow I was beginning to get at what I think of myself in the mirror, though possibly this is an uncomfortable subject to start in on. I might write a little on the matter, anyway.
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Wednesday / 10 March 2010
Well, I fell short again and the writing trailed off. But I am continuing to-day; I am at the library, people are about, and this keeps me focused and in the spirit of study and thought, and graciously staves off the feeling of a lonely heart that makes me want to spend all the day in bed. The sun is hanging in the sky, though the day is at times a little cloudy, and the temperature is warm, nearly sixty. It makes a very great difference, having this sort of weather. Some days must be dark and dreary (Longfellow). Yes – but then the clear and bright days become even more a thing to delight in. I did not sleep the whole winter through, but I came frighteningly close to doing just that. I could say it was a dark winter, in the figurative and literal senses – a double blow over the head. But I might rather have two negatives and two positives than spend my time hanging somewhere in the middle of half-good, half-bad. It is the old love affair with extremes. Of course, I don’t like the term love affair too much, but I am only trying out different applications of words.