Repeatedly I have suggested to myself that it might be a good idea to keep a diary - perhaps because I have hoped that were I to keep a diary I might feel constrained to do something with my life. Well - of course I am doing something with my life. I am squandering my life. There really is no point being tactful about it. There is never any point being tactful to oneself. Books - books make the world go round. Books record that the world goes round. Without books we might not be at all sure about the matter... Without books I am not at all sure that I ... do anything at all. But - I have tried. I have begun diaries. With the most laudable of intentions. And I have forgotten all about them. Also - I am 22. I would much rather begin a diary at the beginning of a decade. And - it is December the fourth. And I would much rather begin a diary at the beginning of a month or a year. 22 years of lost life. 22 years of blank pages. This is what eternity looks like in miniature. And it is existential angst. And it is The Scream. So This little bit of non-diary will be an attempt to convince myself to keep a diary. It is a telling-off - and an attempt at self-redemption.
'Schools or parents may teach or require children to keep diaries in order to encourage the expression of feelings and to promote thought.' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diary). Without diaries (of some sort), I'm not sure we actually HAVE thoughts - all becomes inchoate. Without having to express anything to anyone ever (yes that is my without-a-diary experience - my out-of-literature experience) one simply doesn't convert one's experience into a narrative form. This may be closer to a sort of mystical-Evelyn-Underhill-esque truth than the (unbearable) narrative of OTHER PERSON: How was your day? ONESELF: Well I did this and this and this and it meant this and this and this to me and I felt this and this and this... Or as the case may be OTHER PERSON: How was your day? ONESELF: Why on earth do you need to know that? Leave me alone.
I suppose partly I do not keep a diary because I am afraid that it will highlight the monotony of my life. MONDAY: Dazedly wandered out of bed around noon. Shouted at someone. Drank coffee. Facebooked. Read a novel. Facebooked some more. Lost consciousness. TUESDAY: Dazedly wandered out of bed around noon. Became entwined in some obscure brawl. Drank coffee. Facebooked. Read a book on how the self is connected to some section of the brain which, is inadvertently removed, annihilates one. Facebooked some more. Lost consciousness. WEDNESDAY: Slept all day like a cat. THURSDAY: Dazedly wandered out of bed. Had minor tantrum. Strode ten miles. Drank coffee. Lost consciousness. FRIDAY: Dazedly wandered out of bed. Spent all day on Facebook to make up for Wednesday and Thursday. Lost consciousness. SATURDAY AND SUNDAY: as Monday and Tuesday. What all this lacks, of course, is progression. It is like wandering through a forest dappled with light. It is like Proust's idea of memory. It very much is not like a present melting (or striding) into a future. I am too - laid back. Watching the clouds (and clouds most significantly represent time for me) pass by. Staying almost eternally still. Time-lapse photography would reveal subtle changes - the sorts of expressions which pass by the people in The Picture of Dorian Gray (no - not the hideous and sin-linked aging - though perhaps that too - decadence - decay - sinking into the underworld of sunken ships - neither waving nor drowning but drowned).
I am also wary of falsifying myself. This may seem terribly terribly precious - but I am, to me. Anyone who isn't precious to themselves ought really to become so or to give up on the whole exercise of existing at all, no? That is what is so dislike about therapy. The self-creation over the self-creation like layers of wallpaper held together by inescapable yellow glue. Being papered over. Suffocating silently. So that in the end only the imprint of a silent open glue-choked mouth remains. Still and undamaging but really quite dead. Analysis - falsification. Who on earth KNOWS what I did. Or why. Or what I thought. Thoughts are games. Moves in games. No more real than that. All that is real is the physical. I am composed of [insert number here] atoms. I am [insert geographical position here]. My name is [insert name here]. God knows about anything else. And God as I picture/visualise/conceptualise it is all possible worlds, all possible possibilities - EVERYTHING - truth. Beyond that the possibilities are endless. Perhaps I put on my shoes because I wanted to feel the sensation of the structure/texture of them on my feet. Perhaps I put on my shoes because I wanted someone to admire them. Perhaps I put on my shoes because someone told me to. Perhaps I put on my shoes because I read an article claiming that the putting-on-of-shoes was good for one's health. Perhaps I put on my shoes because I felt that it was impossible for me not to put on my shoes. Perhaps I put on my shoes because my feet had grown mouths and were going to scream and I needed to hush them because The Society For The Shooting of The People With Screaming Feet were parading past me clothed in purple robes. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps... Polysynapticorgiasticfantasticscholasticbombasticfatalisticsadisticmoralisticfix. If I am to diarise (rather than 'If I am to die') then let me diarise in the form of a collage book thing of thought. Don't for God sake let me lock myself into a persona. This isn't a play, even if the world is a stage. Or, at least, if it is a play, I really don't want to feel constrained to play one part in any narratively coherent manner. Anyone less involved with me than I am will put all the pieces together anyway. Simply because there will always be some element of Carrieness. Some element of Carrieness I personally probably would not see. Because I am so much with me. Almost always with. Quite possibly never away from me. And that is a dreadful thing, isn't it, never to be away from oneself? Like being endlessly stalked by an identity. Who shall I be today...? Oh. It's me again. Drat. I rather wanted to be Elizabeth the First. Or Oscar Wilde. Or ... Theymondialkle Yhebhe. Whoever on earth or under over or around it they may be. (I remember my grandmother often exclaiming 'And who are you being NOW?' - the answer being, usually, someone I had read and absorbed like a literally vampire/eater-of-souls). And that is what we do when we experience other people's thoughts, surely? We become them, just a little. We consume them. We are what we ... think. Which is possibly why we have such a horror of being subjected to ideas which we find dreadful - and people whose ideas we find dreadful. Quite apart from the pressure of the expectation of not breaking furniture over their heads...
So a book. A book. A book I do not destroy or decide to use for something else or lose or pour coffee over or anything else but diarise and archive somehow. Because really I'd better get on with living. 22 years is a long time. It could be a lot worse, of course. But I've been worrying about the passing of time for around a decade, now, and, surprisingly enough, time hasn't frozen itself for me. And it won't - probably. (I don't entirely rule it out.) But what on earth is the point I can't help but think if I've no-one to show it to? Would a blackbird on its own on a post-apocalyptic earth bother to sing? And of course the whole point to some extent of a diary is that one can write anything at all and I can't exactly write anything at all if other people are going to read and/or look at the thing. Good God no. I would be - lynched. Or - utterly abandoned. Or thought terribly terribly odd. Or terribly terribly unkind. Or terribly terribly indiscreet. Or terribly terribly terribly. No-one would ever be able to tell me anything. But how to keep the thing secret? Where to hide it? To bury it? To wrap it up with chains and padlocks... I would have to have the thing with me to write in it. But OH MY GOD what if anyone read it? It would be ... hideous. And also of course the after-I-am-dead thing. I wouldn't be at all surprised if whatever diary I kept were published after-I-am-dead. (Or, rather, while I am dead - unless I intend to somehow transcend death - and intending to transcend death is all very well...)
Or - are poems enough? Not if I don't write enough poems... And poems should be art more than they are life. Not: I love walking by the sea and eating ice-creams oh and I'm in love again ain't that nice and I like slippers. No - life isn't art unless - it is.
