Good From Ill

[cobalt999]

Journals have a way of exposing our weaknesses, whether we want them to or not. These flaws are embedded, and emerge unspoken. Terse, everyday accounts suggest an absent imagination. Soaking sentimentality proves no restraint. When we speak of others, we say as much about ourselves. And when we speak of ourselves, we never say quite what we intend

Comments

[laozi]

I empathize with your thought process here, and with your decision. It's a decision that I've often flirted with, for similar reasons. I always end up coming around to other matters that I feel the need to work through with writing, though, and I enjoy the exchange with others that livejournal facilitates, so I compromise by periodically deleting all my old entries and starting afresh. It's an imperfect solution, though, and the prospect of discontinuing my journal has recently become more appealing to me than ever before.

I'll miss reading your posts. I'm a relative latecomer to your journal, but I've enjoyed my brief readership here. Your entries are often thought-provoking and challenging, and always very well-written. I hope that you will continue writing in some manner, even if only for your own eyes.

[cobalt999]

I admire your approach. I don't have the commitment to immolate my words and emerge phoenix-like, much less with your frequency. There's something noble in that. When I consider the collective effort that went into all my entries, I don't think I could ever hit the button. It's too much of me to destroy with such finality.

Colin suggested a Top 10 of cobalt999 entries, and I could probably sort out a prime lot from 836 contenders. If or when I put it together, you'll have a chance to read any salvageable material you might have missed. I'll probably return to LJ for reasons of convenience, but I need to savor some distance to make sure I do so with the right intentions.

The man has a knack for titling

[colinmarshall]

My selections for inclusion in the top ten:

Form and function

One Day in the Life

The Estonian

Institution of Excellence

One Long Set

Cabbage Soup

The Vancouver Puzzle

That River of Days

Fortune

The Gnarled Tree

Summer's End

Deaths

(Yes, twelve.)

Re: The man has a knack for titling

[csn]

Gee, now I'm gonna ask for my own..

[cobalt999]

That's a fine list, and contains a few I would choose as well. The truth is that I don't even remember everything I've written here, and can't really suggest others off the top of my head.

I'm actually a little chilled you produced this. I'm closing my journal partly to prevent such easy association in unscrupulous hands.

(Oh, and while it doesn't really change the content of the entry, the heritage claimed in Cabbage Soup is somewhat incorrect. After some research, I discovered that my grandmother's parents were both born in a small town in eastern Slovakia, and later moved to Budapest. Hence I'm a quarter Slovakian, not Hungarian. Thanks to the corpulence of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, they're even claimed to be Austrian in some official documents.)

[colinmarshall]

Chilled? Really?

[cobalt999]

Well, I'm impressed, too. But I try to imagine the most embarrassing use of such information, and come up with a lot of unsavory possibilities. You have nothing to worry about; your journal is about as incriminating as an issue of GQ.

[colinmarshall]

I'd incriminate myself in something, but I just can't come up with anything. Clearly, I need to try harder.

I basically knew going in which posts I would list in the top ten. Finding most of them wasn't difficult, since my favorites skew toward the last three years. (I don't think that's an artifact of my reading your journal more closely in the last three years; it seems to me your writing, or at least how you direct your focus when writing, has actually improved greatly.) Locating those entries that precede "The Vancouver Puzzle" was a bit of a slog; I'd forgotten how much you'd written about Katrina and the 2004 election.

[cobalt999]

Here is the candidate entry I couldn't remember on the phone; it's my encounter with the Afghan woman at YVR security. It probably holds more weight for me than for others, as a memory anchor.

[csn]

Oh, now we have a Slovakian link.

[cobalt999]

I was secretly pleased to uncover a Slavic connection. But Magyars and Slovaks are all mixed up, so it's not like it really settles anything.

[csn]

You and your fetishes.

[cobalt999]

On second thought, the timing of their immigration to America strongly suggests they were ethnic Slovak.

[colinmarshall]

Oh, and, out of curiosity, which of my selections would you not have chosen? Or, better yet, which ones would you not have chosen that, by virtue of my selection of them, have you reconsidered?

Re: The man has a knack for titling

[laozi]

oh yeah, i made the soup. pretty good