a journal within a journal

I was three-fourths done with an entry about what and how much writing means to me. Two faulty computer clicks and it was all gone. Five seconds of a daze and a fury later, I start again.

I, like anyone else who reads or writes a public journal, wonder sometimes about public versus private writing. A lot of people argue that you can't judge someone by their blog, that inevitably the writer is more complex and multidimensional than the writing. I definitely see the truth in that--the selectivity that comes with choosing words will always impose limitations on what you can express and in turn what the reader can perceive. But I also think that often you can get more from entries than from direct communication. Not that this should necessarily be the way it is, but the nature of relationships and personal interaction makes it so.

I think this applies to self-perception too. I haven't written in my own journal since the beginning of October. The other night I was organizing my book shelf and came across it. It's amazing how long two months can feel, how distant I feel from the last thing I wrote, how easily I forget things that I felt so strongly at one point. I don't know what's more valid, my memories (or lack thereof) of actual experiences--memories that change with each day--or the writing that records and encapsulates them at the time. Either way, I'm glad I wrote them down. I recognize that writing as a medium is just that--a medium, a catalyst--that can't relay experience directly, but I also think that it can be an agent for more than that.

June 7
I'm finally back home.
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Everything here is the same, and I'm not. At every point in my life I think I know myself more completely and accurately than the last.
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Something Barnes said resonated with me. He said when you're young you live for the fullness of the seasons whereas when you grow older you appreciate the in-between moments because you've recognized--resigned to?--the uncertainty of life. It seems reversed for me right now, though. College definitely cemented the presence and reality of uncertainty in my life forever, but I'm not afraid of it anymore and I want those full seasons to come--why should there ever be in-between moments?
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This is solely for me; no need to explain or show anything because I will know what I meant, and reinterpret, in the future.

June 9
How funny and fitting that so far "May" is my favorite chapter in The Jane Austen Book Club. It's about Prudie hosting the book club meeting on Mansfield Park (but never actually doing so). Prudie never knows what's real; it's blurred by false and imagined memories, fairy tales, images. Loves France but never wants to go there. Maker of lists, but not a prisoner of them.

June 11
When I'm with others, I feel so ordinary. Does recognizing the possibility of the extraordinary make an ordinary person any less so? If not, what a life this person leads, to be able to see possibility and to never attain it. Capote says that with the gift comes the whip for self-flagellation. Maybe I have only one or the other, more likely neither.
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It's good to be back home. Amidst traffic today I saw the most breathtaking view of Fremont's brown hills against Northern California's wispy clouded skies. Stephen always thinks Fremont hills are only beautiful when green. His eye for beauty is much more selective than mine. The brown touches me in a different but equally powerful way. They're always there, and that's my favorite part about them. What I do miss about the East Coast--the walking. I liked walking places. The trade-offs, I suppose.

June 20
He's the one who's made me so afraid of being selfish, so much so that I made my number one goal to become more selfless.

Deep down I know how hard it's been for him.

July 14
I waver between using my interests to define who I am and hating being defined by my interests.
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So much easier to write than to speak.
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He is one of those people who makes me feel so good because for some reason I've made an impact on his life, one of those people whose lives I feel genuinely include me. I don't see or talk to him all the time but somehow he always remembers me, has managed to still want to talk to me after all these years. In that respect he's the most loyal person I know.
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A six year old girl told me today, "You're a kid too."

August 15
Even though they're both unusually emotional, whenever they talk about love, it's so analytical. It's about the girl's qualities, rarely ever simple, pure feeling--the kind of inexplicable emotion that doesn't need and actually resists analysis, no explanation, no reason. I wonder if that's the kind of love most people feel, and I wonder which I will encounter, if either.
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I just want to go back to school and move my life forward instead of simply organizing for change here.

September 5
Home from Hawaii. Exhausted. Mixed feelings. Only one week left, wish I had at least two. As anxious as I've been for school to start, something's suddenly brought my heart back here. I don't know what it is. I still can't wait for school, but now I wish I could be in two places at once.

September 10
I want to soak up the last remnants of home with as little introspection as possible--just my parents, the couch, good food, packing, tv music and movies. Is it possible to miss things before you leave them?

September 14
So much has been racing through my mind this past week--I know now why we were made to sleep.
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I love being a couch potato with my dad, such closeness in that silence.
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I've been thinking a lot about what it means to know someone. I wish sometimes there was someone who wanted to know the stupid little details of my personality. I wonder if those kinds of things will change over the years. It seems like the most insignificant components of ourselves are the ones that endure the longest.

October 4
"He had all the bones and joints of other men, without any of their proportions."
-Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans