I have come to the conclusion that I have a sporadic journaling brain. I have dozens of journals where the first ten or so pages are filled with daily entries, and then the rest is left blank.
Instead of fighting this instinct in myself, I decided to bend to it, and instead keep a digital journal. Whenever I feel a new idea enter my brain, I open my computer and let the writing flow. This lets me experiment with style and ideas without being constrained to talking just about my day. Below are some of my entries.
It’s so common to discuss the losses brought by technology – the loss of face-to-face conversations, the loss of a connectedness to the here and now. But there is one loss that is often overlooked, and that is the art of thinking.
Not the art of philosophy and political thinking – that’s going strong, and if anything, it’s made more chaotic by the internet and technology. I mean that passive kind of thinking you do on a walk, or just sitting down at a restaurant before the waiter arrives or someone comes to dine with you.
It still exists, of course, in small corners and pockets of our life. There are moments when we cannot be with technology, but they are so few and far between that they are almost nonexistent unless we consciously choose them.
Think about it; when you used to be able to just look around and silently enjoy the community and “vibes” of a location, now you must be doing something. Actively thinking – about politics, schoolwork, regular work, family. Not passively thinking. It’s almost odd to make eye contact with someone walking near you. You quickly look down and pretend you were just taking a break from your real pastime – most likely checking your phone. In the elevator, for instance, to avoid the silence that, with time, has now become awkward (since no one can just stand there and think, can they? That’s just weird.) people must whip out their phone to check meaningless apps and random facts that they probably already checked five minutes before.
Let’s go back, at least every now and then – to when doing nothing was just normal, and making eye contact wasn’t a sign of having nothing to do. When we could disconnect from the global events around us and connect to the reality of the sun and the sky and the flowers and the snow and the wind. Let’s bring back the art of passive thinking.
She came at midnight, sent by the stars. Her sleek coat challenged the emptiness of the night, equal in color but deep, soulful, soft. She had chosen them, and she sang them her sorrows. They brought her in and called her their own. They smothered her. Cuddled her. They promised they would never leave her.
She loved them, and they adored her. With them, she learned to fly and tested a ledge of death. And the uncatchable became her playful prey.
Then, the five years, the constant love through sorrow.
Her memory is forever encased in her little clay paws.
A year ago today, I had a vivid dream
A dream of such strange condition
Where I seemed to have come
To the Greatest of All Things.
It was everywhere, and nowhere
A place of no space or time
Where limits seemed to be reached
And yet nothing at all was bounded.
Many things made sense there
That nowhere else would they be,
Like the ever-distant lovers, those great parallel lines
At one point finally did meet.
Time itself I also did see,
A great big circle, or something like
With values and ideas stretching
As far as space could reach.
I felt rather small there, and insignificant
But an insignificance of great joy too,
For there is something beautiful in just being
And in being something small and true.