 Drool & Hodgepodge |
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There are journals I like. There are journals I dislike. There are journals to which I am wholly indifferent. There are journals that I find and forget. There are journals that I stop reading and remember.
Then there are journals that are so astoundingly good that they make me want to quit altogether.
One of those journals is Flightless.
I remember when Melissa recommended Liz's journal months and months ago, and I remember reading a few entries. For whatever meaningless reason that escapes me now, Flightless escaped me. Escaped my time, my memory.
Beth mentioned it recently, and I followed the link, and I am not exaggerating when I say that my mouth just dropped open.
I mean, observe please:
Dogs absorb stress and they shake and move and it shakes and moves them. Old houses are haunted, but not in the way you think. Sentences probably shouldn't be interrupted by so many parenthetical phrases. I don't want to disappoint the people who let these words fall over their monitors: there is a great flaw here. (It is, has always been, my ignorance.) These entries are promises to myself. Moby-Dick isn't really about the struggle between good an evil. It is about the struggle between freewill and fate. I am about the struggle between freewill and fate. And November is pulling itself shut.
Just ... color me amazed. I don't know Liz. We've never written to each other. Usually I find new journals because someone with whom I've corresponded begins one and is kind enough to share it with me. But for the first time in a long time, I've stumbled across the journal of a complete stranger simply by following the link of another stranger and felt that hypnotic attraction to incredible talent -- chronicling a time of life I desperately wish I had myself chronicled -- and it just takes my breath away.
Go ahead and read her archives. You'll see what I mean.
She writes of Eliot, Thomas, I think, I owe you my sanity. Ultimately, even more than making me want to quit writing altogether, a journal as magnificent as Flightless by a writer as magnificent as Liz makes me proud to continue.
When I'm jolted out of my peaceful slumber by a flyaway feather tip that has just impaled my eyeball
Create a Wish List.
It was accessory breast tissue. Apparently it's very common, and it gets a little swollen and tender at certain times of the month because, well, it's made of breast. And we all know they just get like that. The doctor said some women even get little third nipples there, making me giggle and think about Chanandler Bong.
I totally watched Titanic on NBC the other night, and I totally cried when Rose jumped back onto the boat and Leo told her she was stupid. I wiped my tears and snot on the sleeve of my summer camp sweatshirt.
Blair's hair on The Facts of Life last night. I actually shrieked and scared the dog.
Adopt Budweiser as one's autumnal drink of choice. Eat lots and lots of caramel corn. Just trust me on this one.
Unfortunately for me and my Victoria's Secret credit card ... panties.
"Why must this man insist on ripping our hearts out in every single song?!" after hearing the way Mandy Patinkin says the word "old" in the line, "I'll be seeing you in all the old familiar places..."
Gena asked me to be the godmother of her first child whenever he or she happens to come along.
Robert Downey, Jr. singing White Christmas. Jeannie and I laughed and said, "At least he didn't sing Let It Snow." "Or I Won't Be Home for Christmas." "Or Crack Pipes Roasting on an Open Fire, 8 Balls Nipping at Your Nose." It's so sad. We're so evil. I love him. I think my callousness was just a coping mechanism.
Resist buying Christina Aguilera's Spanish album. Um, kidding. My grandmother asks me every time I go to see her when I am going to start working on a book about her life. Guess what? I haven't. I probably won't. The idea paralyzes me. I don't know why. Only I really do.
journal archive
© Copyright 2000 words diminish |
I Stay Near You by M.E. Kerr Listening George Winston's December Watching Roman Holiday, over and over and over. I don't know what satanic force prevented me from seeing this movie for 25 years. I also rented High Fidelity, which was horrifically bad, and Cradle Will Rock, which was alternately boring as bloody fuck and fascinating. It was worth watching if just for one scene -- if you've seen it, you know the one I mean. Journal Quote du Jour I want to write like I used to, again. I want to write about lovers sitting naked on the screened porch, laughing and sharing an orange and a cigarette during the last sultry days of summer, when all of the other summer-home people have already left for the city ... I want to reach out again. To touch, to feel, to create. To wake up that part of me that has been asleep for too long, and let it run wild and free, with the wind in its hair and a smile on its face, chortling the belly-laugh of an innocent baby. I think it's ready to come out and play. -- Reaching Out and Touching from Dawn's Running with Scissors ... a journal that is already so much better than it possibly should be at barely one month old
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