Go Forth & Bear Witness

[mallorys_camera]

Why do people keep diaries anyway?

I have no idea.

I know for me personally, chronicling is deeply ingrained. It feels like the one thing I was placed upon this planet to do. And it has always felt that way even when I was a child.

Exhibit A:



How many nine-year-olds do you know who annotate for the sake of posterity?

Exhibit B:



I was even younger when I wrote this on the flyleaf of a volume of an ancient moldering children's encyclopedia that I found in the House of Usher's basement.

Again, that preoccupation with Someone looking over my shoulder to whom these words would mean more than they did to me when I was writing them. It's the certain knowledge that they would mean more that's spooky.

I suppose one might say that these are extreme versions of the type of hypervigilance all sensitive, intelligent children exercise in response to mad, capricious parents.

I don't actually know.

But it feels more like functionality coding hard-wired into my DNA: Go forth, thou, and bear witness.

###

Not that there was much to bear witness to yesterday! It was a gorgeous, sunny day; I was happy. I Remunerated and then I tromped.

The trout lilies are in high bloom—



—and the bloodroot—



The magnolias, meanwhile, are on their last gasp:

Comments

[summersgate]

I love your flower pictures. Good job! And I love reading your diary. You were born to be a writer and chronicler of life.

[mallorys_camera]

Awwwww. Thank you! ❤️ I love your art & photographs!

[suzannareads]

Elizabeth von Arnim, whose journalistic fiction I love, once wrote, “I’m so glad I didn’t die on the various occasions I earnestly wished I might, for I would have missed a lot of lovely weather.” ❤️

[mallorys_camera]

Ha, ha, ha! 😀 Very true.

[rebeccmeister]

I always describe it as the demons compelling me to document. I started a paper journal in third grade and have continued journaling in paper or digital form ever since then. At some point I remember learning there are people who eventually destroy their journals, and the thought still shocks me. I do disagree at points with my former self.

I don't know that I expect anyone to read any of what I've documented after I have died. I don't even know if I'll reread much. I have the thought in my mind somewhere that *someday* I'll go through the reams and reams of photos again. But I don't even know if that will ever happen.

So I think it may just be a way to mark time. Plus for me, it's akin to musing aloud, although my "musing aloud" voice is different from my writing voice. Not *that* different, but different enough that I do more journaling than actual loud-musing.

[mallorys_camera]

I destroyed most of my old paper journals a year or so back.

I've written extensively about how when I wanted to get rid of them some time ago, they would not allow themselves to be gotten rid of, it was a plotline straight out of a Stephen King novel!

But when I finally began rereading them, I thought, These are not terribly interesting. Or well-written.

Destroying them, thus, was an editorial decision. 😀

I've been keeping online journals since 2001, and interestingly, they are far better written and much more entertaining than the paper ones were. Something about writing for an audience, I suppose—even if one only has the vaguest sense of that audience.

[asakiyume]

I've always been ashamed of my kid diaries (VERY boring) and my juvenilia (also very boring and badly written). Really nothing to see AT ALL. I have the kid diaries because they're a record of daily life, but yeah, I used to start diaries and then destroy them because I was so disgusted with the boring whiner that I was. Writing online is different because of exactly what you say! The possibility of a reader curbs ... something in me that I don't like.

[asakiyume]

The eyes of 8-year-old you are so clearly the eyes of current you <3

Do you remember writing that in the encyclopedia? Were you asking what the (future) fate of your cousin David Vogel would be?

I love that you put "I love you" before you asked "What is your name? Sign your name." And was it you who put "Robin" in underneath, too? In which case, that name sure did stick with you ^_^

[mallorys_camera]

No, Robin actually came across this old Book of Knowledge volume when he was around eight and signed his own name. 😀

I don't specifically remember writing on that flyleaf, but I remember that little girl who was writing very vividly. 😀 It is an odd snippet of time travel. And David grew up to be a doctor.

[asakiyume]

Whoa, love that Robin continued the tradition!

[smokingboot]

I never kept a diary when I was a child because nothing was happening and because if anything did happen and I wrote it down, at least one of my parents would find it and read it.

I don't quite know why I journal now and don't mind people reading at all. Perhaps because I'm in control of what's happening.

That little girl is a time traveller!

[mallorys_camera]

don't mind people reading at all.

That's true, isn't it? You don't lock yr journal. 😀

[smokingboot]

Very seldom do I lock my journal. There are a couple of exceptions to that, but I began it to force myself to write regularly and to stop caring about whether it was good enough to be seen.