Saturday, March 9, 2019

20190309.0430

I've spent a few days reflecting on the books and academic journals I have in my possession, considering whether I ought to keep them or send them out into the world so that others may make some use of them. (I have no intention of simply discarding any of them; even if I no longer have need of or use for the text, its value is not exhausted, and I chafe at the thought of destroying writing.) I still have not reached a decision about doing so, and I have other things going on that would keep me from acting on such a resolution, in any event. (As this reaches the part of the internet where people can see it, for example, I am on another trip away from home, though not as far from home as last week's, and with family.) But I have another factor to consider, at least as regards my desire to keep texts with my marginalia as a means of helping Ms. 8 or others to know me better: my personal journals.
I'm sure I've noted those journals before, in this webspace and elsewhere. To treat them again, though: I've kept journals intermittently since my undergraduate years, doing so in fits and starts as I progressed through my career as an English major and graduate students, and continuing with many interruptions in the years since completing formal study (coming up on seven, now) and pressing on with the task even after leaving aside the idea that I can be a "real" English professor. I had been exhorted to do so earlier in life, but it was one area where I was not a good student, and even in the years I've done it voluntarily, there are substantial gaps in my record-keeping, lacunæ in my journals that are results more of my laziness and inattention than anything else.
Still, I return again and again to the work of writing them, and I do so for several reasons. One of them is that I need the practice with my handwriting. My pen-hand is terrible; it is difficult to read and always has been (though I note with some interest that a number of the people in The City who saw me write commented that my script was pretty). I struggle to write legibly, which is part of why I type as much as I do, but I struggle less when I am in practice in my journals. So there's that.
Too, I am still somewhat rooted in older identities, as my recent discussion of my books should attest. Journal-writing is something educated people do, at least to my mind, and I flatter myself that I am an educated man; it follows, then, that I would work to journal. And there is still some sense of vanity even within that. When I thought I would be a professor, I thought that somebody might want to read "my papers," among which would be my journals. The professorial thought is gone, though it does sometimes threaten to act the zombie and rise again to consume my brain.
That said, I am not entirely arrogant to believe that someone will want to read what I write. I have every expectation that, if they survive my death, my wife and Ms. 8 will want to look over the pages I have penned. My nephews might, as might my nieces. And perhaps by then, there will be others, too; Ms. 8 may want children of her own, and she might have siblings who also want and have their own children. I can hope that they will have my journals if they want them--and if they do, then they will not have so much need of my marginalia to know me as me and not me-as-my-relationship-to-them.

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