Writing As a Form of Prayer
I think yesterday was the week mark that I've not had my own computer, which, in theory, shouldn't be that bad. But, for me, it is. When I'm at home, home alone, and there's nothing to do, I feel totally displaced. I don't know what to do with myself. Especially at a moment like this--having finished dinner and dessert parts one and two and now sipping some wine--I feel like the computer is the only thing I can turn to. I feel unhappy, bummed (I realize only now what "to be bummed" really feels like). And what I think it is is not so much that my computer is broken and I'll have to pay to get it fixed, but that I cannot write. I do not have my journal. It's not as though I couldn't find some other means of writing, as I'm doing now, but the physical object, my journal, is gone, away from me, as though it's run away from home or something. True, it's just a word document, a .doc as I think of it, but over the six years that I've written in it, it's experienced a sort of reification. It's gained a significance in between a journal I just found and a confidante that I've established an intimate relationship with. It is the vile that holds all of my essence. What I have realized facing the fact that I could potentially lose a significant amount of journal entries from this year, and, my deepest fears have projected, potentially every single journal entry I've ever written (though that's impossible, as I've taken many precautions), is that writing is not so much an act of preservation for me. Reading through journal entries has been nice, but even with some of my more enjoyable-to-write entries, I've never really gained as much pleasure reading what I've written as I have writing. Even now I feel it, having imbibed a few sips of wine, the familiar taptapping of the keys, letting my thoughts flow naturally, seeing them make the kind of trail a snail makes on the ground, that is a reassuring feeling to me, proof that I exist and have existed and that a blank space exists ahead the cursor before me, otherwise all thoughts come into being and float like bubbles above me to never be seen again--even the metaphor is slightly depressing.
In the beginning I started my journal inspired by reading Kafka's. I remember that one of my first journal entries quoted him: "Writing as a form of prayer." At the time, the fragment was immediately pleasing to me, though I'm unsure if, so early on in my journal-writing career, I really understood what he meant. The idea of defying elementary principles of grammar was fresh to me, so this little nugget of a simile was pleasing, prescient of the kind of literature I would later enjoy. Without having truly understood what he was getting at, I also might have appreciated the idea that prayer could mean something else other than its face value. To me, then, prayer had meant one thing and one thing only, something which I had shunned, but might have looked on with a subconscious envy. What was prayer really? I had never done it, and to me it seemed like some kind of superstitious act, but there some power seemed linked to it. Then, Kafka told me that writing, too, could be prayer. At the time that I quoted that line, my journal entries were still very dilettante. Somehow I sensed that, even though I rarely abided by any consistent regiment, as the years would pass, I would follow this one. My plan then was to make the journal entries short, or rather, I told myself, just write something everyday and surely it will feel more natural as time passes. Little matter if the first journal entries come out sounding deep or important, at some point you won't even notice their eloquence, but others will appreciate it. To this day I'm unsure if the general public would be more interested in reading this year's journal compared to that first year's, but I remain convinced that I've made huge strides in the act of writing, even if I only have myself to convince.
Surprisingly, I did keep it up. In that first year my entries rapidly grew in average length. My methods then were different than they were now. Then, for some reason, I felt it was important to record whether or not entries were written a day after the events happened. So, I would write as though something happened that day, but prefaced the whole entry with "(wnd)" which stood for written next day. Now, I'm uncertain as to why I did that, but I might have been delighted with having invented an abbreviation that would have made sense only internally. I do remember feeling slightly unsatisfied that the method had to exist in the first place. I wished that all events could be recorded as they happened, that I carried my computer, or the equivalent, around with me at all times, that my thoughts could be translated into sentences in a word document.
Also in that year, the journal lost a significant amount of entries--the only time it ever happened, aside from, possibly, now. I don't remember how I lost so many entries, but I remember that it was a month. At the time I was devastated. The only thing that I can recall happened during that "lost time" was that entry I had written in real time when college rejections and acceptances were being posted online and I described a minute play-by-play of what my emotions were as I checked over and over again if the results were posted. My feelings toward losing that entry, among others, are dual. First, obviously it would have been nice to see how I felt during that time, how I wrote about it, what I noticed and what I failed to notice, what my methods for recording such a real time moment were and whether or not they could produce any pathos in the reader. But on the other hand, it seems inconsequential that I've lost that entry now. Since then there have been much more important entries and times in my life, and theoretically, if I can't remember what entries I lost then, then I probably lost nothing worth remembering. The very questions of journal-writing are brought up right here. If everything is recorded, what use of memory? Is memory allowed to follow the natural path that it will when all is recorded, mostly without judicial procedure. But most importantly, if everything is recorded equally, even the mundane, then what becomes of those special times of life that deserve a biblical treatment? It seems, in a journal, everything is paired down to equal treatment, the important moments might receive more sentences, yet in the end they are jumbled together in a mass of words. However, it must be noted that in journal writing, the memory is already at work. My dissatisfaction that I couldn't record everything same-day proved foolish: journal entries written a few days or even a day often are much better than an entry written that day. Events written in real time will have no time to separate the mundane from the important, whereas, given some time to digest events, the memorable will begin to show itself, and the mind will more easily dissect it into sentences.
Another problem became clear as I left high school and moved on to college: during the more enjoyable, more important times of my life, I had less time to write than when I was lonely, or inactive or both. The paradox was unavoidable, when I had time to write, I had nothing to write about, and when I didn't have time to write, that was when I needed to write the most. I think it was after I came home from Bordeaux that I read something Henry Miller had told Anais Nin, something that she had written in her own journal. Miller criticized Nin for writing too much, for not living enough. It still took me a while to really digest the meaning of what he said to realize that it was true. If I didn't have time to write because I was active, than this was only natural. In those times, when I felt I was actually Living--and theoretically wanted to write about living--that was when I had to just go on experiencing, and not worry about recording. So the problem revealed that Living and Writing were opposites, though one gained its inspiration from the other. Writing mimics life, but inevitably is displaced from it, can never truly mimic it. The tunnel between the two is memory. But when Life is in full force, writing takes a back seat. That summer that I returned from Bordeaux, I read a lot of Hemingway, and the summer following that one too, and in the fall and winter months I began to tell myself that in the end, all this living, all these drunken moments, especially, when the tunnel of memory was closed off, all this would pay off in the form of writing. Hemingway was a drunk. The Sun Also Rises especially is nothing but a laundry list of what each person drank at each spectacle. And every one of his books seems to feature a particular drink, which no doubt Hemingway researched to the fullest. So, I told myself, if Hemingway could drink and forget and still write about life, then so could I. (Maybe because of that, in the recent past, I drink more than usual.)
In the years following that first when I started keeping a journal "as a form of prayer," I generally stuck to the method of attempting to record what happened chronologically and the thoughts and feelings that went along with those events. A lot of times, writing in my journal felt like a chore, but one that I felt so strongly about, that I continued it. Honestly, I rarely feel strong enough about something that I keep up with it, unless I'm forced by an outside party. Exercise, cleanliness, practicing an instrument, I am occasionally inspired to keep up a routine and complete daily chores, but in the end I always lose interest. But with writing, I never lost the passion for it--although "passion" might be the wrong word, maybe something closer to "responsibility," this week it has become clear that I can't even organize my life properly without writing. In recent years I've let my mind wander as it will, allowing it to shake free of the method of chronology and allowing to memory to have more of a control over my writing. Usually, if I write about a couple of days, I end up focusing on everything that happened that was important anyway, but if I follow a more organic pathway, then the entries seem more interesting, at least to me, and less like chores developing them. I suppose, before, writing in my journal should have been a chore because it was done in the name of preservation of time rather than in the name of literature, or something like that. Like, little matter if my entries weren't interesting, as long as I wrote about everything that happened. But since I've had time to read over my journal and I have realized perhaps the obvious to everyone else: the most diligent entries are the most boring. Journal entries should be, and naturally turned into, rants, rants about the good and bad. I should not try to organize, but allow them to burgeon as a town does, and, like a town, things will make sense in the end.
Since those prehistoric times I have realized that writing is a form of prayer; surely, it even predates prayer. Why else would I feel bummed about losing a word file, something that, in my heart, is not a person like a confidante is a person, but still has the same meaning to me. When I spill my life and thoughts, apostrophize, to my journal, I do not expect a response, but in some weird way, that absence of response is especially comforting to me. With that, I can reveal the most interior secrets and I can still do it in a way that seems important, eloquent, and worthwhile. The idea of prayer is rudimentary; in my opinion it actually imitates writing, and its failure lies in the expectation that something will come of it. Still, I always thought that if I wrote in my journal at least a few times a week, writing would feel so natural to me that using it as a means of living would only follow naturally.
(Realizing that it's kind of amazing to think about all those Olympic athletes who probably have practiced their sport and routines so much that it's like walking for us--still I have a long way to go).
Ahh, I feel better now: like farting, it feels good at the time, but I'll be embarrassed afterwards.
In the beginning I started my journal inspired by reading Kafka's. I remember that one of my first journal entries quoted him: "Writing as a form of prayer." At the time, the fragment was immediately pleasing to me, though I'm unsure if, so early on in my journal-writing career, I really understood what he meant. The idea of defying elementary principles of grammar was fresh to me, so this little nugget of a simile was pleasing, prescient of the kind of literature I would later enjoy. Without having truly understood what he was getting at, I also might have appreciated the idea that prayer could mean something else other than its face value. To me, then, prayer had meant one thing and one thing only, something which I had shunned, but might have looked on with a subconscious envy. What was prayer really? I had never done it, and to me it seemed like some kind of superstitious act, but there some power seemed linked to it. Then, Kafka told me that writing, too, could be prayer. At the time that I quoted that line, my journal entries were still very dilettante. Somehow I sensed that, even though I rarely abided by any consistent regiment, as the years would pass, I would follow this one. My plan then was to make the journal entries short, or rather, I told myself, just write something everyday and surely it will feel more natural as time passes. Little matter if the first journal entries come out sounding deep or important, at some point you won't even notice their eloquence, but others will appreciate it. To this day I'm unsure if the general public would be more interested in reading this year's journal compared to that first year's, but I remain convinced that I've made huge strides in the act of writing, even if I only have myself to convince.
Surprisingly, I did keep it up. In that first year my entries rapidly grew in average length. My methods then were different than they were now. Then, for some reason, I felt it was important to record whether or not entries were written a day after the events happened. So, I would write as though something happened that day, but prefaced the whole entry with "(wnd)" which stood for written next day. Now, I'm uncertain as to why I did that, but I might have been delighted with having invented an abbreviation that would have made sense only internally. I do remember feeling slightly unsatisfied that the method had to exist in the first place. I wished that all events could be recorded as they happened, that I carried my computer, or the equivalent, around with me at all times, that my thoughts could be translated into sentences in a word document.
Also in that year, the journal lost a significant amount of entries--the only time it ever happened, aside from, possibly, now. I don't remember how I lost so many entries, but I remember that it was a month. At the time I was devastated. The only thing that I can recall happened during that "lost time" was that entry I had written in real time when college rejections and acceptances were being posted online and I described a minute play-by-play of what my emotions were as I checked over and over again if the results were posted. My feelings toward losing that entry, among others, are dual. First, obviously it would have been nice to see how I felt during that time, how I wrote about it, what I noticed and what I failed to notice, what my methods for recording such a real time moment were and whether or not they could produce any pathos in the reader. But on the other hand, it seems inconsequential that I've lost that entry now. Since then there have been much more important entries and times in my life, and theoretically, if I can't remember what entries I lost then, then I probably lost nothing worth remembering. The very questions of journal-writing are brought up right here. If everything is recorded, what use of memory? Is memory allowed to follow the natural path that it will when all is recorded, mostly without judicial procedure. But most importantly, if everything is recorded equally, even the mundane, then what becomes of those special times of life that deserve a biblical treatment? It seems, in a journal, everything is paired down to equal treatment, the important moments might receive more sentences, yet in the end they are jumbled together in a mass of words. However, it must be noted that in journal writing, the memory is already at work. My dissatisfaction that I couldn't record everything same-day proved foolish: journal entries written a few days or even a day often are much better than an entry written that day. Events written in real time will have no time to separate the mundane from the important, whereas, given some time to digest events, the memorable will begin to show itself, and the mind will more easily dissect it into sentences.
Another problem became clear as I left high school and moved on to college: during the more enjoyable, more important times of my life, I had less time to write than when I was lonely, or inactive or both. The paradox was unavoidable, when I had time to write, I had nothing to write about, and when I didn't have time to write, that was when I needed to write the most. I think it was after I came home from Bordeaux that I read something Henry Miller had told Anais Nin, something that she had written in her own journal. Miller criticized Nin for writing too much, for not living enough. It still took me a while to really digest the meaning of what he said to realize that it was true. If I didn't have time to write because I was active, than this was only natural. In those times, when I felt I was actually Living--and theoretically wanted to write about living--that was when I had to just go on experiencing, and not worry about recording. So the problem revealed that Living and Writing were opposites, though one gained its inspiration from the other. Writing mimics life, but inevitably is displaced from it, can never truly mimic it. The tunnel between the two is memory. But when Life is in full force, writing takes a back seat. That summer that I returned from Bordeaux, I read a lot of Hemingway, and the summer following that one too, and in the fall and winter months I began to tell myself that in the end, all this living, all these drunken moments, especially, when the tunnel of memory was closed off, all this would pay off in the form of writing. Hemingway was a drunk. The Sun Also Rises especially is nothing but a laundry list of what each person drank at each spectacle. And every one of his books seems to feature a particular drink, which no doubt Hemingway researched to the fullest. So, I told myself, if Hemingway could drink and forget and still write about life, then so could I. (Maybe because of that, in the recent past, I drink more than usual.)
In the years following that first when I started keeping a journal "as a form of prayer," I generally stuck to the method of attempting to record what happened chronologically and the thoughts and feelings that went along with those events. A lot of times, writing in my journal felt like a chore, but one that I felt so strongly about, that I continued it. Honestly, I rarely feel strong enough about something that I keep up with it, unless I'm forced by an outside party. Exercise, cleanliness, practicing an instrument, I am occasionally inspired to keep up a routine and complete daily chores, but in the end I always lose interest. But with writing, I never lost the passion for it--although "passion" might be the wrong word, maybe something closer to "responsibility," this week it has become clear that I can't even organize my life properly without writing. In recent years I've let my mind wander as it will, allowing it to shake free of the method of chronology and allowing to memory to have more of a control over my writing. Usually, if I write about a couple of days, I end up focusing on everything that happened that was important anyway, but if I follow a more organic pathway, then the entries seem more interesting, at least to me, and less like chores developing them. I suppose, before, writing in my journal should have been a chore because it was done in the name of preservation of time rather than in the name of literature, or something like that. Like, little matter if my entries weren't interesting, as long as I wrote about everything that happened. But since I've had time to read over my journal and I have realized perhaps the obvious to everyone else: the most diligent entries are the most boring. Journal entries should be, and naturally turned into, rants, rants about the good and bad. I should not try to organize, but allow them to burgeon as a town does, and, like a town, things will make sense in the end.
Since those prehistoric times I have realized that writing is a form of prayer; surely, it even predates prayer. Why else would I feel bummed about losing a word file, something that, in my heart, is not a person like a confidante is a person, but still has the same meaning to me. When I spill my life and thoughts, apostrophize, to my journal, I do not expect a response, but in some weird way, that absence of response is especially comforting to me. With that, I can reveal the most interior secrets and I can still do it in a way that seems important, eloquent, and worthwhile. The idea of prayer is rudimentary; in my opinion it actually imitates writing, and its failure lies in the expectation that something will come of it. Still, I always thought that if I wrote in my journal at least a few times a week, writing would feel so natural to me that using it as a means of living would only follow naturally.
(Realizing that it's kind of amazing to think about all those Olympic athletes who probably have practiced their sport and routines so much that it's like walking for us--still I have a long way to go).
Ahh, I feel better now: like farting, it feels good at the time, but I'll be embarrassed afterwards.