Just as I sit down to write this, juniper is starting to wake. We’ll see how far I get.
Between watching this amazing person take shape, reading Kristin hersh’s fantastic memoir, and finally unpacking my studio, I have been thinking so much about my own shaping. I ran into my old journals. So many of them! I’ve been a prolific journal keeper most of my life. It’s sad the electronic ones don’t have the same feel as the paper ones. Opening to random pages is such a strange sensation. I recognize some of the words so clearly and others not at all. And I’m amazed at the thought I put down, how I can see them connecting to my own life now and who am I at this point. I want to share some of it, though with juniper keeping me so busy, I don’t know if I will. Amazing to be able to archive such strong emotions all these years and they still seem fresh and real, though thankfully distant. In the distance between here and then, there is so much clarity.
I quoted Tobias Wolff in a journal from 1997. From a boy’s life
When we are green, still half-created, we believe that our dreams are rights, that the world is disposed to act in our best interests and that falling and dying are for quitters. We live on the innocent and monstrous assurance that we alone, of all the people ever born, have a special arrangement whereby we will be allowed to stay green forever. That assurance burns very bright at certain moments.
on the opposite page I wrote:
I just watched a show on Wallace Stegner. He wrote Big Rock Candy Mountain. Watching him makes me feel like I live in a big sea of masses where there are no heroes. Just faceless crowds.