your journals

[Glorious Amok]

do you ever read thru your old journal entries, and stare drop-jawed in horror at the pathetic "phases" you've passed thru? are you ever so in disbelief at what you've written years ago, months ago, weeks ago, just mere days ago, that you want to rip out the page and destroy it? hold a ceremonial burning and release these useless old energies into the forgiving midnight sky? or is every word you've ever written, every path you've ever travelled sacred to you and revered for all your life?

if your journals are found after your death, would you want them published? would you want chapters withheld? which chapters?

[Dave The Dov]

If there is an intrest it will be published

If there are people who want to read it it will be sold

If there are any compliments about them it won't matter because you're dead
_________________
Mercedes 35 hp

[Marksman45]

Going through my old notebooks is like looking at baby pictures

The person that wrote the things I wrote years ago is no more me than the seed is the tree

I hold on to them, but I rarely let anyone read them, and if I do it's prefaced by "oh here's an old something-or-other," and there are still some that no one gets to read.

I think there's only two old poems of mine that I still like more-or-less unchanged, that being "Wintersong" and "Always, Always" which are about 4 or 5 years old

I often take old pieces and re-write them, though.

[Glorious Amok]

the seed becomes the tree
issuing leaf after leaf
thousands of poems each year
that day after day are released from their bindings
torn free from the spine,
flutter to the forest floor
and there are rotten, decomposed
their poetry becoming illegible, lost
it is this pruning which creates
such a beautiful tree
which could not have matured thusly
if it had to hang on to them all...

[WIREMAN]

hundred's of em
in boxes down in
the lock-up and the
art storage space
where I keep the
oldies but goodies
so busy writing the
day that is, the old
gets left in the dust
maybe some day I'll
go back and do some
chuckling...................

[Glorious Amok]

i can already see
all those leaves turned loose
scattered on the winds
raked into heaps
and burned in harvest ceremonies.

like my old garden of zinnias
if you pinch out the old, dead blooms
the bush will give forth new flowers
the stalk itself becoming
thicker, more hearty.

and me,
i long to burn in those autumn flames too
and emerge from the fire
transformed.

[mousey1]

Oh my God! If anyone ever reads my journals I will be moritified and they will be horrified at this twisted sista! No, not really, but there's some pretty embarassing stuff in them. I don't think I'll ever let anyone read them, I would be blushing like a bride. My journals are a scrawling mess. I will not ever be famous so no one will want to read them anyway, so I will most likely burn them...too much me in there for anyone to take, sheesh, even me.

And yes, when I reread this stuff I think YIKES!, and I tear out pages all the time. If I had had kids it would have been nice to save them for them, under lock and key, so they could have a good chuckle at their ma's psyche after she be gone....but since I never shall, they'll burn baby burn.

I better get busy.....prying eyes you know, they're everywhere, trying to sneak a peak. I wonder if I'm paranoid.

[lescaret]

I have journals going back to when I was 10, a pudgy little hockey player who always wanted a derby hat so I could imitate Curly.

Juvenalia is understood. What is embarrassing is to read journals from my late teens and early/mid twenties. Like most at that age, the persona that comes across thinks he knows SO much and has so many hip beat experiences under his belt. But the poetry is so bad!

As I aged, however, I became quite fascinated with published journals, those of artists and writers whom I admired or who interested me. My own journals underwent a transformation. I became less hung-up on their strict format (neat script, clean, no experiements, etc.) and "loosened up".

Then at some point I discovered Peter Beard, the photographer, Africanist, diariest, and my whole concept of journaling changed.

Here are some samples of Beard's journals:







Now I look upon journaling differently, I bring to bear between the pages all the inspiration I can conjure from Beard, Ray Johnson, John Evans, Joseph Cornell, Ginsberg, and, of course, the extraordinary, Harry Crosby.

[lescaret]

This is an interesting project:

http://www.1000journals.com/index.php?v ... ut%2FIndex

"The 1000 Journals Project is an ongoing, collaborative experiment attempting to follow 1000 journals throughout their travels. "

[sooZen]

Glorious...some of them are embarrassing but hey, I wrote them. One of them even starts, "if you are reading this, I must be dead". I have lots of unfinished journals...they just trail off and a new one appears. Cecil bought me a fancy assed one one time in a velvet pouch, with a beautiful ink pen. I tried to write in it but was intimidated by the heft and gentility of it. It didn't suit me and still lies dormant except for a brief fling.

Then he gifted me with my latest...a rough leather bound one, small enough for my saddle bag, deckled paper that takes a gel pen or ballpoint with ease. I can even color in it without batting an eye. It is comfortable and comforting. Scratching out something doesn't phase me...mistakes are cool. It goes with me on my trips, sometimes ignored but always ready. I stuff it with postcards of places I go, a nude pic of Cec, a love letter...it is my pard. I want my family to see them someday as reminders of my passing on this path. I just don't want to see their faces when they do read them. Hah!

Les,
I wish I would take the time for serious journaling...ala those that you show. Nick Bantock is one that I love and I have collected most of his books. He took journaling to a high art as well as the art of letter writing...

Good topic GA...fun!

Peace,
SooZen

[Lightning Rod]

I started losing my notebooks when I was in my teens
I've probably lost hundreds of them.
some were full of poems
some were tunes and chords and rehearsal notes
some were letters and grand adolescent theories
but all of them are lost
left in a bus station
or under a girlfriend's bed
or on a park bench
thousands of poems written and lost
it's just as well
poems are only good for a moment
like a work by Christo
created, viewed, abandoned, recycled.
now I have poems strewn all over the net
written in zeros and ones that I can't even see
ideas last longer than paper


my sister is the family archivist
she has a satchel of my old papers
she presented them to me one time
and it was like being on an archeological dig
each page a layer in the sediment of my own history

[shamatha1]

There's no reason to wait till after you die to publish those journals anymore; thousands and millions of people put their privatemost thoughts online for the bored and insomnial to read every day and places like livejournal or diaryland or blogspot.

I find journals fascinating but I'm not sure how I feel about reading someone else's. Someone like Kerouac, I have no problem with, as he really saw his life as an open book, kept files of his journals, and probably intended them for a larger audience somedays anyways. Somebody like Kurt Cobain, who seemed like a pretty private person, it seems shameful that his journals saw the light of day.

Myself, I save thoughts erratically, which months-long gaps followed by pages long periods of meticulous record keeping. I fully intend to burn them before I go, so hopefully my death be not sudden.

[bennie]

i don't keep a joural as such but the notebooks I have are journals come scrapbooks come sketch books come stains come on, man who cares...

There are some really nice things here http://www.babyshambles.com/books.html if you can be bothered flicking through numerous pages of garbage and pages that take four hundred and seventy two years to load.

They are the journals of Pete Doherty. he used to be in the libertines but gave up his liberty to form an addiction to heroin and crack and a new band called baby shambles. they're pretty good too but the sad thing is the drugs make him seem more interesting than if he were clean.

My notebooks are filled with ramble tamble rubbish and stuff that spawns lines for poems or words I never knew I knew. a seed a tree

well what about the dirt the seed needs to grow? I ask you! some people can't see the dirt for the seed/tree journey.

there's a coffee table in your eye
kiss the needle and hope to die
if it's shrewd let it grow
silken womb and baby's toe
lover on a cross
devil is the boss
the piano glitter
worst ever shitter

fluff and stuff like that. i'm not really a writer anyway. I just write and write and in the middle (next to the period and the blood stain) I find two or three good words (seeds) that will maybe grow into a tree

grow from
a seed
grow into
a tree
grow out of
the dirt

then it's chopped down to make pencils and paper and money and such.

http://www.abcgallery.com/E/ernst/ernst.html

well, you have to let the wound heal over before you can pick the scab.

I have no idea what I'm writing here.

Except, yes, I keep a journal type sort of thing and if I'm not near a computer I'll write in my little book and near misses will...

miss,

usually.

that's what near misses do.

got an idea for a film
black and white
played backwards through the eye of a needle

there will be an autumn leaf motiff
and succulent virgins dying on vines
strawberries and grapes will be fed to the victor
and a dada landscape will unfurl wire coathanger trees in a turpentine stained sky.

I'll see if harrison ford is interested.

[mousey1]

For fuck's sakes Bennie....you're so funny....stop it!....I'm rolling here...and I mean on the ground...not rolling any funny cigarettes or anything.....rolling with laughter.

You're a good writer. You got the talent mon.

Aw quit your blushing.

And of course everyone here is very talented, lest anyone is feeling left out.

Like me




Hmmmmm? "succulent virgins dying on the vine"
What about drying on the vine? Probably more appropriate....they do you know, those "succulent virgins", they turn into withered old things and then drop on the ground to be ground into succulent dirt. Just a thought. Sorry for messin' with your script, but there should always be hints of reality in any fine screenplay.

[bennie]

yes yes. the virgins fall and crumble and make dirt. (i was saving this for the big budget MGM sequal, you fucker)

YOu see, the virgins fall, make dirt and the dirt creates a home for the seed and the seed grows new trees with new virgins who fall off and die and make dirt and...

you see? so, to recap for those at the back...

Seed in dirt makes tree
tree grows virgins
virgins wither and fall
withered virgin turns to dirt
seeds grow in dirt...

it's a black and white film played backwards through the eye of a needle called Pheonixly Speaking and it stars Harrison Ford. He said he'd only do it if I gave a part to his woman. So, Allie McBeel will be "staring" as a branch on the tree


but the real question is: can toothpicks fart?