on-line journaling is like whispering out loud

In paper journals, I had a set time to write. It was time to tune out monkeymind and let the pencil find words. Sometimes, I'd jot a note of something I needed to remember: "rain sounds like an old typewriter -- I need a book, a blanket, brimstone tea."  In that note, the whole day comes back, like it's slipping in through a door I left open just a space in case it wanted to return -- or not, as if it didn't matter.


Other times, the writing would be full of details with all the he saids and she saids and descriptions of how the air smelled and what was simmering on the stove and what was outside the window and who'd come calling and who was visiting only in my thoughts.

Paper journals.

Now I want to paint the pages, blur them a bit, so that only a few words show through. I want to art them up with magazine pictures coated in glitter and glue. I don't need to remember so much anymore. The past went somewhere, but it didn't really. It's right there.

My little girls. When I let myself look at them... little... I can't stand that we are not out walking together like we did then, playing together -- my best friends ever. My girls. I see a snapshot that stills them at three, five and seven or eight, ten, and twelve and I can't breathe for a minute. What came together to still them for that moment and not the next one or the one before. How can anything so gorgeous be real.

I used to spend an enormous amount of time just staring at them. I try not to do that now. But they are stunning. What wonderful old women they'll be. By then, I'll be a photograph they look at, not realizing (maybe) that I'm looking over their shoulder.

Thinking the past is not healthy. Maybe I'll whisper that to them, then. Leave the pictures in the past and go take new pictures of a new day. It's the act of taking the picture that matters. Or the act of writing. Not so much reading it again later. Write it and let it go.

Paper journals. Tell the truth. Mostly.

On-line journals, though. You have a challenge there. You write enough to not quite say anything.

Tonight, I've been cruising around a bit, reading here and there. I updated my GOODREADS page, my facebook status and read Tweets by a few folks I know on Twitter. I never thought I'd be so wired.

Paper journals. To lift a pen, rustle a page, spill a few words...