I am not a natural diaryist or journaller, depositing into the chronicles of my life regularly seems hard. I guess it is always superseded by the visual documentation and narrative that always fills my mind and head space.
It is a practice that I am in the process of cultivating, or shall I say, re-cultivating. There was once a time in my life where I wrote freely and often, nightly at least. It was a rich and fertile time creatively, and I seek to return to that one day.
I used to write by hand, but man, due to the lack of use of said handwriting, writing by hand is a chore, leaving my hand sore before the work is through, leaving the page an illegible mess.
In this digital age, only typing can keep up with my rapid and disjointed streams of conciousness.
And here, I decided to put up that very thing, my first entry into my digital diary, rough streams of literary bullkaka, straight from my mind to the keyboard, and maybe printed out if I remember. It is my attempt and making the diary and journal keeping a possible reality, of allowing myself an outlet that exists only for my own cathartic dumping, maybe never for sharing.
But here, let's share it anyway, because it's weird and wonderful and because it was my first entry, a starting point of such, a step toward healing myself with my own words....?
It was late at night, so remember that.
12/11/2015 2:00am
Just watched Wild, have already read the book previous so knew what to expect.
The main thing I got from the movie is a familiar creeping sense of mortality that has been following me for a while now anyway. An acute awareness that every moment slides on by never to be held again, and our sum of them all is finite, limited, coming to an end as we march on through life. Marching to our doom and demise. This acute sense of time running out, slowly but surely (if you’re lucky), it nestles on my shoulder, reminding me, imploring me, to enjoy it all and surrender to it, surrender to the inevitability that it I will all end and blow into the dust, into the ether, and all we have tangibly is the present. My son is five and my parents are ageing, my body is beginning to fail me, none of these things will wind back, time will not stop, they will all continue on their tangents until the end. I am convinced this is the time of my life, of our lives, that we look back on with fervent love, nostalgia, longing and regret. When your body is able, your children are young and love you well and you have a perceived length of the road ahead of you. You console yourself with time, I have time, there will be time, but it is but a fallacy because none of it is guaranteed. In my old age I will reminisce with an empty womb and empty arms, maybe alone, about those days that flew by, with my son at my breast, or asleep in my arms, my love loving me well and my family near and whole, and I will rue spending so much time departed from it all in my phone, or in my worries, or trying desperately to capture it,or in the future and the past, because possibly I never enjoyed what was in front of me for want of what was coming, or want of what had been. What silly fallible creatures we are. In this imperfect life I want to live it all and remember it well, and maybe there stems my compulsion to document…. rooted in the notion that it is all impermanent, it is all sliding away, and my memory cannot hold it all, so I snap and snap and capture and document. But remember, or don’t forget, to enjoy it and be in it and a part of it too. I hoard images to hoard memories to surround myself with all that I loved, reviled, remembered and learnt, I hoard them all because deep down I know they are fleeting.
There is a foreboding about it all but also it brings everything in focus, when I let myself feel the creeping dread that eventually leads me to enlightenment and a better way of living, let us hope it is not too late. In the creeping dread lies all my secrets and motivations.