The Long and Winding Road from Journal to Memoir

July 31, 1990–I wrote the first words in one of seven journals I would write on my year-long solo trip around the world.

June 16, 2016–I wrote the first words in one of ten spiral-bound notebooks I would write on my seven-year journey to publication of my memoir, When Your Heart Says Go–My Year of Traveling Beyond Loss and Loneliness.

When Your Heart Says GoHow do you get from there to here—journals to memoir? Telling that story could be another half-dozen journals and who knows how many loose-leaf notebooks. This is what I know for sure:

Turns out I don’t know anything “for sure.”

What I do know is my experience. First, keeping the journals. I have been a journal writer since back when we used to call them “diaries” and they came with a tiny lock and key confirming all would be private, for our eyes only. Sometimes that was true, but as too many of my journal-keeping friends can attest, was not always the case. But most of us just keep doing it anyhow.

The second part of keeping the journals is, well, keeping the journals. For me that meant packing a growing and messy stack of them (those five-year diaries with lock and key by now a relic of the past) and lugging them from home to apartment to marriage to divorce and so on for years—decades. At one point, in my mid-twenties, I burned many of my journals, embarrassed by my naiveté and romantic, rhyming poetry. (I have since forgiven myself and accepted that of course I was naive—I was young and romantic.)

But journal-keeping became a practice of my daily life, and remains so to this day—sometimes just a page or two, sometimes riffs that go on and on and who’s counting pages. I keep these journals in the top drawer of the little cabinet that’s attached to my kitchen table and every morning, pour my coffee, light my candle, get out the journal and pen and begin. I date the page and write the first word and what happens next is sometimes as predicable as the San Diego weather, but more often a surprise, especially to me.

I don’t keep all of my journals anymore; too many moves, too much lugging. Not so the journals I keep while traveling. Those I keep in a separate place and carry with me to the next place. I have those original seven journals from the around-the-world trip as well as journals from travels to Bali (1975), Bolivia (1977), New Zealand (1989), Barcelona (2003-2005), Paris (many times, but never enough), and many other places more exotic than my kitchen table—even that fishing camp at Lake of the Ozarks (2000).

Original journals (1990-91)

 

Now I have a New Year’s Eve ritual of reading the years’ accumulation, keeping what matters in a separate collection, and releasing the meanders, the whines, the pissing and moaning, the mundane to what will either be recycled or released into a ceremonial bonfire.

Do you keep a journal? Every day? Every so often? Only when you travel? Only for special occasions? Handwritten? On computer? Special notebook or blank book? Special pen? Visual journal? Do you keep your journals?

What Summer Can Do to You

I began writing this on the eve of the Full Moon of August, mostly commonly known as the Sturgeon Moon, but which is also known, among a dozen other names, as the Moon When Cherries Turn Black, Moon of the End of the Fruit Moon, Berries Ripen Even in the Night Moon, Blueberry Moon, and Blackberry Patches Moon.

Photo by Mesha Mittanasala-Unsplash

Clearly, August is all about ripening and I ask you, when has the fig season been so exuberant? When have peaches been as delicious and succulent as this summer? My friend Zoe tells me the peaches are more abundant and juicy this summer because there’s been more sun, less rain (at least here in SoCal). And that begs the question: when has our beloved Earth been more generous or more in danger? Like life itself (it is life itself), a duality, the yin and yang, the yes and no, the possible and the impossible. And we go on doing what we can, when we can.

Photo: Quin Engle, Unsplash

Eating and writing about figs and peaches brought up literary references for me. Devouring one particularly voluptuous, ripe fig, I remembered the scene in Ken Russell’s film, Women in Love. As Hermoine delicately slices a fig at an outdoor picnic, Rupert, says: “The proper way to eat a fig in society, is to split it in four, holding it by the stump and open it, so that it is a glittering, rosy, moist, honeyed, heavy petalled, four petalled, flower. Then, you throw away the skin, after you have taken off the blossom with your lips.” There’s more to this delicious speech in the film but it’s not in the original text of D.H. Lawrence’s once-banned novel on which the film is based. Originally, the lines come from his poem, “Figs,” which goes on to have a bit of a sexist/ageist ending.

Eating peaches, on the other hand, which I have been doing rather a lot of these last weeks of summer, reminded me, as any mention of a peach will, of the line from T. S. Eliot’s poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” which also speaks of aging, but of oneself, not women.
I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind?   Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.
 
Whatever it is about late summer that has me driving with the top down and spitting cherry seeds into the wind, eating mango sorbet from porcelain bowls in bed at night and staying up too late watching old rom-com films, I have to admit, I love it. It is nostalgic and sensuous and feels a little indulgent. But then I say, why not? Summer ends soon enough.

Just Like Old Times—But Not

Little by little, we’re poking our masked faces out the door and taking our vaccinated bodies into the world again. One of my greatest joys is that the libraries are fully open again! All these long months of the pandemic restrictions, I’ve been ordering books via the libraries’ “hold” option and picking them up (masked) at designated spots after getting my temperature taken in the lobby and squirting disinfectant on my hands. Mind you, I’m grateful we had those limited services, but I have missed actually being inside, amid all those books.

Now that the libraries opened again, I get to hang out with those generous and helpful librarians (thank you!), and lollygag as I browse the stacks. I can take my laptop and find a quiet place at an unoccupied table, or a comfy chair by a window with a view, I can go to live, in-person readings. And holiday shopping is going to be so much more fun this year now that The Library Shop at San Diego’s Central Library is open for business again.

With a few free hours last week, I made time to visit Central Library downtown. As I wandered around, checking out the New Releases on the main floor, what a kick to run into an old friend and writing colleague. We stood, masked, and talked for a lovely long time about what we were reading, what we were writing, what we wanted to read next. How I have missed these spontaneous sparks of friendship that can happen when you’re out in the world.

Still grinning, I took the elevator up to the fourth floor—fiction. Ever since I read Richard Powers’ The Overstory a few years ago, I have intended to read more of his books. (I’m #180 wait-listed at the library for his newest, Bewilderment.) So amid those rows and seductive rows of possibilities, I searched under his name and came up with several novels to choose among. I pulled out Generosity – An Enhancement, sat down on the floor, and opened it up for a quick review. Look what I found inside!

Yep. A “Hold” slip with my name from almost exactly a year ago. Apparently I had asked to put it on hold, but never picked it up and it got recirculated to the stacks. A sure sign this is the one, among ten other novels he’s authored, I’m supposed to read next. I checked it out along with a two other novels, bought a couple of books from the Friends of the Library shop, and, disappointed that The Library Shop wasn’t open, validated my parking—with still :20 left on my two-hours free—and headed home.

A few of evenings ago, I started reading Generosity and I am enchanted. This is one of those books, as was The Overstory, that I keep both my commonplace notebook and my iPhone near by while I read. I write phrases and sentences and other tidbits in my notebook and look up words and obscure references in my phone; a Richard Powers book offers many opportunities, which makes them my favorite kind of book.

No wonder I love libraries. When I die you know where you can scatter my ashes. Probably wouldn’t be the most unusual thing librarians report finding in returned books.

Meet you among the stacks?