Do you remember the Indiana Jones movie about the Holy Grail, in which Henry Jones Sr. keeps a scrapbook-like diary with all the clues, symbols and research he's done on the artifact and its location?
It intrigued me more than the plot of the movie, really, and that's saying something because the Indiana Jones movies are my favorite stories in cinematography.
I have been given countless blank journals as gifts and they intimidate the heck out of me! Pristine, empty pages....books and books of them....waiting for something brilliant to be inscribed on them. And I've got nothin'.
Well, that's not true.
I've got plenty of things to write and say; it's just that the minute I open one of these dear little books, I get brain freeze.
MORE SO than normal....
The pressure of making it worthy, beautiful and enduring, is huge. I imagine my family and friends finding the journals after I'm dead and gone, reading them and thinking, "That's it?! That's all that was in her head?! She wasted ink on THAT?!"
You've read my blog, obviously.
I can write pages about flies and hole-y underwear and skunks.
With passion!
Can you imagine stumbling across 15 books of THAT?!
Don't let's.
That's not a legacy.
It's a comic book.
BUT...
I did grab one in a moment of weakness and jot a couple quotes in it.
Then, I pasted a great wine label that I couldn't bear to throw away with the bottle onto one of the pages.
And tucked a funny card from a friend in the back.
Taped in a Dilbert comic that made me laugh.
And wrote another couple quotes.
It suits me; it suits my personality.
Informal, not bound by duty, whimsical, bright, occasionally deep....
It's a little volume of delights and memories for me to return to, a place to tuck my smiles.
It certainly won't save any one's life, as the clues in Dr. Jones' diary did, nor reveal any sort of treasure, but it's a start. It's almost full, so I'm looking at the next empty journal to begin volume two in.
Do you keep a journal?
Besides Facebook or a blog?
2 comments:
I used to, but re-reading it always depressed and/or embarrassed me. I find writing to be therapeutic. When I am angry or sad I write down my feelings, but usually wad them up and toss them. It's a healthier release than saying something cutting I will regret later.
Oh, isn't that the truth?!
(It's more satisfying to burn them, but still...)
And still...I usually end up saying something I regret. Or writing it here.
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