I Dream in Ink

What is the world coming to? First I steal my own posts; now I'm stealing back my comments. But iHanna had an thought-provoking post on journal-keeping, and I wrote a long comment, and I have the pictures to go with it already, and voila! A blog post!

This is a composite photo of the shelf on which I kept my journals before the renovations. Now, unfortunately, I've had to pack them away to make room for art supplies, but someday I hope to bring them out again. They are my life, literally, on paper, and therefore, deserve a little place of honor, I think.

I’ve kept a journal since I was seven -- the first one was a Nancy Drew diary complete with lock and about three one-sentence entries. (One of those entries is about going to see Return of the Jedi with my dad. I was very excited. I wrote two sentences.). You can see that journal on the right, the thick ivory-ish book seventh down in the stack. I never throw my journals away. My biographers might need them. Or the great-grandchildren, anyway.

I've had tiny journals and huge journals (see the one on the far left?), fuzzy journals and leather journals, spiral bound and other-bound. Most of the journals from my teenage years are pink. The fourth (black with white polka dots) and seventh (blue shiny) journals from the left are the two I kept as an exchange student in Germany. That's when I started buying journals with cool designs and interesting textures. That's about when I started calling them journals instead of diaries, too. In college, I bought the funkiest journals I could find. On my road trip in 2002, I stopped in Oxford, Mississippi and bought a plain red journal with a magnetic closure, at Square Books. I think it cost $12. I filled that journal in four weeks. And I liked that journal so much that I detoured through Oxford again on the way back to the East Coast so I could go buy another one. I'm not kidding. In Philadelphia, I started looking for journals I could keep in my purse, journals that could take a lot of abuse. That's how I eventually started using Moleskines (well, okay, so, I read that Neil Gaiman uses them and that prompted me to try one). Moleskines, as journals go, are almost boring, but oh-so-sturdy and practical, and there is also something indefinably magical about them, which may be why they have such loyal fans. They feel like a writer's journal. As opposed to what, I don't know. Because they feel like artist's journals, too.

I am not sure I can even articulate what keeping a journal means to me, or how it's changed me, because it’s been such an integral part of my life. But I can tell you that when I don’t write in a journal regularly (and I’ve occasionally gone up to six months), I start to feel quite fragmented. I try hard to write morning pages, although often, it's only morning in Hawaii by the time I get around to it. I understand my own feelings better if I write them down. In fact, I often don't even know how I feel about things until I write in my journal. Writing is how I process my life, in the way they say dreaming is our mind's way of processing. My journals are dreamlike -- they ramble, they float, they can be surreal, and often, they probably would make no sense to anyone but me. But I don't know. I don't let anyone read my journals. If I did, I wouldn't write the way I do and they wouldn't work anymore.

See, my minute-to-minute thoughts are very analytical, very curious, very problem-solving, and rarely directed inward. I’m a textbook INTJ, if that helps explain. I'm one of those people who’s constantly asking “Why?” and "How?" and "What?" like a little child… why is the sky blue… why is the bridge built like that... what is electricity (I made my husband explain that one in great detail)... how does the economy work... I usually have three or four tracks of thought going at the same time, most of which have nothing to do with me or my life. (Which explains the vacant stare so often seen on my face. I'm probably thinking about agriculture in Antarctica.)

My journal writing, on the other hand, is almost pure emotion. I do sometimes actually use them to keep track the events that have happened in my life...

... or in the world around me...

....or just as catch-all scrapbooks, when I didn't have the time or interest in keeping up a big scrapbook...

... or even approximate Latin translations of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star." But they are usually, long, rambling explorations of my feelings, sometimes venting, sometimes exulting, sometimes pondering. Because I already know what happened, you see. So my journal is where I get in touch with myself. Sounds so cliched, but it's what I do. In fact, the emotions in the words are often so intense that, ten years later, I can step right back into events I forgot ever happened.

So you see what keeping a journal means to me. My journals are my life.

(Incidentally, I know these photos are all from my college journals, and I have no idea why that's all I shot, but like I said, the rest are in the attic now, so that's all I've got except for these.)