Introduction:

In ‘The Happy Isles of Oceania’, Paul Theroux comments on the published diaries of the cultural anthropologist, Bronislaw Malinowski: “…They were harmless enough–– just trivia, ranting, loneliness, insecurity and self-pity…”

That comment is surely cautionary advice for anyone who keeps a diary.

Even if the only potential reader of one’s words is some great-grandchild researching family history–– does one want to be known as the ancestor who indulged in forty years of whining?

It is telling that blank diaries of old, often given as Christmas gifts, came with little lockable clasps. It was assumed that they could be filled with the outpourings of secrets–– especially those of teenage girls. Yet even ‘dear diaries’ were vulnerable to being sprung open by spying siblings…

In more recent years, what has come to be antiseptically referred to as ‘journaling’ is widely encouraged by teachers.  Students are assumed to become more creatively self-reflective through the writing ‘process’. Still, the self-reflective journaler who is inclined to explore personal anxiety may well ask: ‘even I am only writing for myself (or for my teacher) –– what is best held back?’

I have never been inclined to self-censor though my decades of journal keeping. Still, I have gradually come to follow a principle expressed in advice famously given to the young Bobby Zimmerman by the great Liam Clancy: “No fear, no envy; no meanness!”

Closer to heart is the model of the journals of Soren Kierkegaard. I do not share his Christian faith but have been inspired by his striving for authenticity amid angst and despair. … As he wrote in ‘the Sickness unto Death’: “The most common form of despair is not being who you are.”

The following forty-three snippets present glimpses of my own ‘strivings.’  I offer them in fulfillment of a promise to a voice that has always hoped for even one listener beyond itself. The old skin is finally thick enough to endure the vulnerabilities these pieces may expose.  

Of course, I cannot claim any of these journal excerpts attain anything close to a Kierkegaardian tenor.  Yet I do hope the quality of the writing is a little beyond the typical entries in the leatherette diaries with the pickable locks…

–FWT (lefthook51)

February 2022

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