Down Memory Lane

[poliphilo]

I take down my paper diary and browse. I do this every once in a while. I think it will be amusing to drop in on my former self.  It never is.

It's more like wading through a morass.

Did I have a sense of humour in 1995? I certainly believed I did. But where's the evidence?

What makes the past such a gloomy place? I think it's the earnestness, the solemnity my past self displays in relation to things that just don't matter any more.

1995 is another century. Unreal. A world of ghosts.

Comments

[dadi.livejournal.com]

No, it is never amusing. The words that come to my mind reading my past diary, be it paper or LJ, are "pretentious", "full of shit", "ridiculous". And that makes me re-read stuff I am writing these days, trying to put myself in a future perspective. Oi oi.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

"pretentious", "full of shit", "ridiculous".

Yes exactly. I kept a paper diary for ten years. 1991-2001. God knows how many thousands of words it contains. At the time I thought i was doing posterity a favour.

[beeswing.livejournal.com]

A little while ago there was a meme going around where people would copy and paste sections from their old diaries, going back several years. It was really funny, actually, and I wished I'd been brave enough to do it.

But it's true — former selves are ghostly! Sometimes I find it hard to realise how I've changed over the years, and reading back old writing always gives a little shock as I realise how differently I saw things then.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

My first idea for this post was that I'd copy across the entry I made for 31/5/95, but I couldn't do it. It depressed me too much. And another thing is it would have required copious footnotes.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

My piles of diaries probably need to be burned, if only to spare my children from ever reading about my impossibly immature adulthood in twenty-plus angst-filled volumes. And also to spare myself.

I can open up a page at random and be thrown into instant depression.

Yes! "It's tne earnestness, the solemnity my past self displays in relation to things that just don't matter any more."

And yet I never learn!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I burned a set of diaries I wrote in my late teens and early twenties. I regret it now.

One's own diary is always depressing and embarassing and humiliating to read. But other people's diaries are fascinating.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

But other people's diaries are fascinating.

When I dip into my memories, whether on paper or not, more than half the time I just feel embarrassed.

I love reading other people's diaries, and I forgive them their naivety and ignorance and youthful mistakes and view their lives, no matter how vile, with compassion ("you poor thing"), but can't do that for myself.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

With other people's diaries it's the follies and faux pas that give them spice.

I'm very fond of James Boswell's London Journal- the record of a particularly obnoxious, mean-spirited, self-righteous, social-climbing young Scot on the make and the razzle in 18th century London.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

In my thirties I loved the diaries of May Sarton, which were really meant for publication, but still were about the life of a [rather arrogant and insecure and narcissistic] writer living alone in Maine.

Her diaries went on and on, through her love affairs (she was a lesbian and always in love with someone who broke her heart), her stroke, and her final illness. Right up to the end, she was a compulsive writer. She spent lots of time anguishing and being infuriated that the critics ignored her poetry (which, sorry: it wasn't that wonderful, actually, to my ear, anyway). She grew more and more hostile to her readers, and finally was so full of herself that, while waiting in a restaurant with friends, she roared (she was always roaring at people): "Why is our service so slow? Do you know who I am?"

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Oh dear.

People who roar,"Do you know who I am?" are destined for one of the lowest circles of hell.

No, that's unfair. They're people for whom we should feel sorry.

I'm fond of Dag Hammarskjold's diary- "Markings". Very earnest. Very Swedish. I read the other day that Swedes hate W.H. Auden's "translation" of it because he peppered it with in-jokes and messages to his boyfriend.

Naughty Wystan!

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Well, good for him!

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Oh, and May was a major name-dropper. She clung to Virginia Woolf, who basically brushed her off, and wrote that Woolf was interested in others but never warm.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm sure Woolf's own diaries are well worth reading.

A book I loved as a boy was a thing called Death In the Air- the diary of a WW1 fighter pilot. It came complete with gorgeous photographs of aerial dogfights.

I have since learned that the thing is a complete fake- and all the planes in the photographs were models.

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

It's like listening to your own voice on a tape-recorder--but worse.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Yes!

[solar-diablo.livejournal.com]

My paper journal is much the same. It just seems as though I had nothing to say unless I was pissed off/depressed.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I guess the main reason for keeping a journal is to get things off one's chest or work things through.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

Depends on why you wrote. Which you discuss later on here.

I discover old notebooks with 'stuff' in them, but I don't believe I ever kept a journal with any regularity for any length of time. Journals aren't of any use to people who are hiding from themselves.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

But what about LJ?

When I started writing here I stopped keeping a paper journal. In some ways this is a continuation of that. But having an audience makes a huge difference.

[iskaral.livejournal.com]

I have never really kept a diary I must confess, but in a similar vein I used to write little notes of litterally how I was feeling at a certain time. This was usually if the feeling was something bad, like I was bored. I would date them and write them in exercise books in not particular place.
The idea being I guess I could read back and reflect at a better time and maybe appreciate that time more.
This was a long long time ago, its strange how kids minds work.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

We all want to leave some sort of record behind, even if it's only our initials carved in a tree trunk.

The irony comes when we look back over what we've written and find our past selves insufferable

Re: the past self

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

We are the sum total of all our various selves- yes, I agree with that.

The past didn't feel gloomy when I was living it. These diaries document the best, happiest, most creative decade of my life. They aren't gloomy in themselves. The gloom is what happens when my present self meets my past self. It's got a lot to do with embarrassment, I think.