Making

We met to discuss Joan Didion's essay on keeping a notebook.   I had suggested that it might be good reading for her Slow Travel class.  As it turned out, it was mainly helpful in helping her define the point of Slow Travel journals.  M's reason for journaling is to help her focus on the moment.  Being open to the events of the moment is a main part of Slow Travel.  On the other hand, Didion's  journaling serves as a window to her past self:  what was she noticing, what was interesting her then?  Sometimes those notes make their way into her writing, but that's not the real point.  My recollection is that a factual record was also not the point:  her notes convey the mood, and may not be accurate.  For example, a past participant might say, "It wasn't snowing," but in her memory and her notes, it was.  That was her reality.

An analysis of reality or mood is not M's goal.  She documents the smells, the sights, the sounds, the tastes, the words she overhears, the breezes, the sweat, the senses.  On the way, she might document an emotion, but mainly she is engrossed in experiencing, not analyzing.  In that way, she is like Christopher Isherwood: "I am a camera," shutter open, passively recording.  Later he will fix the images with his words, but for now, he is an observer.   So, in that way she is not like Isherwood, either.  She is an experiencer, not an observer.  The recording is not going to be used later, it is used in the here and now to help her keep her focus sharp.

It's a subtle distinction, but I am slowly figuring it out.  I'm not sure how she will manage to convey it to her Slow Travel attendees, especially because she also doesn't care how and why other people journal.

As we discuss Didion et al, I wonder, not for the first time, what compels me to blog, to post pictures and haiku to Facebook, to record and share the things that fascinate me.  Why do I need a product? Why can't I just use the camera and the word to help me focus on the moment?  It's true that sharing has some huge fringe benefits:  other people share back, and those sharings inform my visions.  We none of us create in a vacuum, right?  And I get great pleasure when other people post their own creations in response.  It's a conversation, opaque and long-distance, but so much more satisfying than a monolog.

The healing part of this blog is over, I think.  I'm tired of whining about the emotional and physical twists in my days.  I'm tired of being tired, and I'm bored with my thoughts.  I'd like to go back to the sharing part, but I seem to have nothing to share.  I work, I watch the sun set, I do the various things that I can do:  make food, music, photos, poems, love.  I can share some of that, I suppose.  But what I want to do is make tracks.  Where and how, I do not know.