Very small epiphany

[pameladean]

I can usually remember what I was thinking. Sometimes I can remember it all too well. What I can't reliably remember is what I was doing: the shape of an hour, a day, a week. And that is why this journal is the way it is.

Pamela

Comments

[kightp.livejournal.com]

This makes perfect sense to me.

When I was 12 or 13 and started my first "diary," it was a list of things I did every day. A bit later it turned into a repository of post-pubescent emotional spewage. Later - rather more later than I'd have wished - my journals served as places to work out writing stuff, to record overheard conversations and other snippets of life that might want to make it into my writing.

These days, I use journals - this one and my paper one - to record what happened when, and occasionally as reality checks when something that feels emotionally odd or traumatic occurs - it's good to look back and be able to say, "ah, that wasn't as bad as I remember it."

I figure if I make it to 80 I'll be back to the format I used when I was a kid. (-;

[pameladean]

I distinctly recall times when what I did every day was both pubescent and post-pubescent emotional spewage. I noticed in college that I stopped keeping a journal when I was happy. This actually distressed me, but until now I never really did anything about it.

Your full-circle diary musings make me want to write a story in that form. That's really got a lot of potential. Which probably means a hundred people have already done it.

Pamela

[papersky.livejournal.com]

At least you remember what you were thinking!

I can remember what I was thinking, and where I was when I was thinking it, and where other people were in relation to me, and what I was eating, and what book I was part-way through.

It kind of worries me that other people are so different about this sort of thing, it makes me wonder both how they manage to get through the day with their heads still the same person as their feet, and that my characters will seem implausible or all the same because they can remember stuff in an anchored way.

I keep my past states of mind stacked up like a pile of carpets I can go and walk on if I want them back. Some of them I try to roll tightly so I don't step on them by mistake. If I say I have forgotten something, it means a carpet rolled and tied and shoved to the back.

Time, Love, Memory

[pameladean]

At least you remember what you were thinking!

Yes, indeed, it could be worse.

I can remember what I was thinking, and where I was when I was thinking it, and where other people were in relation to me, and what I was eating, and what book I was part-way through.

I can remember all those things for stellar occasions, and for some ordinary occasions as well. But I can't pick a year and a month and be sure of recalling anything at all about it except artificially. So, say, April 10th, 1986. David and I were living in the house on Minnehaha, and it was or would be Minicon, and it was our first spring in that house. But daily life? That day? Who I was reading for the first time? Beats me.

It kind of worries me that other people are so different about this sort of thing, it makes me wonder both how they manage to get through the day with their heads still the same person as their feet, and that my characters will seem implausible or all the same because they can remember stuff in an anchored way.

For the first, I have much better recall for the past six months or year or two years, but at some point it does peter out.

For the second, I have known people almost like Severian, and I accept that there are probably people almost like Latro. I've never found any of your characters improbable in the least.

I keep my past states of mind stacked up like a pile of carpets I can go and walk on if I want them back. Some of them I try to roll tightly so I don't step on them by mistake. If I say I have forgotten something, it means a carpet rolled and tied and shoved to the back.

That would be handy.

Pamela

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

I have trouble remembering anything if I try to think of what I was doing at a particular time. If I think of what I was concerned about at the time I remember a lot more.

What did I do yesterday? Uh...

What was I concerned with? The new Rainbow doesn't carry any Spring Water! (I went shopping)

Grace has been praying for Bruce all this time, and now she's praying to forget him! (and my tears are getting spots on my glasses). (I saw 'Bruce Almighty.)

Ouch; the steering wheel sure gets hot after sitting out in the sun all afternoon.

I don't want to do the dishes now; I'll do them later and see if I can win another round of MineSweeper...

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

Oh yes! Me too. Especially with important and emotional events, oddly enough. I bet I won't remember anything about getting married. :p

I need to start downloading my entries here periodically.

[sdn.livejournal.com]

i think it's common to not write (in a journal, or write period), compose, paint, create when one is happy.

[(Anonymous)]

Your full-circle diary musings make me want to write a story in that form. That's really got a lot of potential. Which probably means a hundred people have already done it.

So? Don't let that stop you. If folks only wrote about original ideas we'd have what, seven books total?

The most unique thing I can remember about recent days is the piper in the parking garage. But after a bit it all starts to blur.

[pameladean]

Ew. That's a depressing thought.

I create better when I'm happy. But I don't tend to write in a journal. Until now.

Pamela