Several years ago, I told one of my cousins if I preceded him in death, he should make a beeline to my place and burn any journal he found before anyone else arrived. He said, “I’ll buy you a shredder, and you can take care of that yourself.” And so, he did. And I got busy.
Not all diaries are secret BFFs, confessionals or epistolary therapists. They are written for many reasons, and some have been quite enlightening in a historical, humanitarian or artistic sense.
After her death, through Anne Frank’s recorded thoughts and feelings, the world, including her father, came to know what it was like for her in hiding during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. Virginia Woolf’s famous diaries are autobiographical as well as where she experimented with and explored her writing. The diary John F. Kennedy kept as a young correspondent in 1945, in which he expresses his opinions about Hitler and the UN, sold for over $700,000. Historians believe it is the only one he ever kept.
Charles Dodgson’s (Lewis Carroll’s) family tore several pages from one of his diaries and mysteriously misplaced some volumes, only adding to speculation about the nature of Dodgson’s relationship with the Liddell girls, including Alice, who encouraged Dodgson to write down the story that became Alice in Wonderland, a book that’s never been out of print since its publication in 1865. Nor has Carroll’s contentious reputation been laid to rest since his death in 1898.
The impulse to keep time and to record fact, fantasy, delight, sorrow, guilt, secrets, and even shame, is not universally felt but sometimes universally appreciated. There is a Wiki page devoted to the many people who were diarists. They include writers, theologians, politicians, philosophers, artists, historians and others.
Whether a diary is intended to be shared or not, the voice is immediate and intimate, implying a sacred trust. The sacred trusts we hold in locked boxes and vaults imo pectore for ourselves and others make each of us diarists. These holy pages can never be shredded, torn out or burned. Along with love and loss, they forever change the narrative.
Recognize the hallelujah holy you are, the glorious gift of life you embody. Praise all your perceived flaws. Your secret superpower is the blessing of saints and the protection of angels. Proceed accordingly.
Brian Doyle wrote a wonderful book called The Wet Engine: Exploring the Mad Wild Miracle of the Heart. It was in this book that I learned a hummingbird, with its rapid heartbeat and two-year lifespan, has the same number of heartbeats a human has in a lifetime, and that at 5’ long, 4’ wide, 5’ high, weighing 400 pounds, the heart of the blue whale is the largest on the planet. The human heart weighs in at 10-12 ounces and is about the size of a fist.
Distracted by the dreamy placid river, broody clouds deciding whether to unleash a storm, fighting an obsession, looking for a hawk, seeing only turkey vultures swooping and gliding, widening their circles, tasked with doing what none of us will, startled by a young buck at the edge of the road in the fog. Come here.
Several two-story high trees were felled in the woods on the Palisades after Superstorm Sandy; their broad, shallow roots useless against hurricane force winds. A mile into a walk, the massive root ball of one of them faced me, a fallen warrior as majestic in death as in life, lying in state holding a shield decorated in a mesmerizing pattern of intertwined roots and dirt. As I paid my respects, like something out of a fable, the brave knight dared me to steal a heart-shaped stone the size of my fist from the center of his shield. I accepted the dare and slipped the stone into a pocket.
Wild heart, strap on your biker boots and take me places I would never dare. Reckless, guileless, bold and brave, tell the voices and distractions to get out of our way.
Take all the secrets and shame from the vault and lay them open on the altar of compassion where they will be burned with sage and sweet grass, then rinsed away with a tincture of holy water, lavender and mercy.
I came across a patch of Queen Anne’s lace in the woods about a month ago. Queen Anne’s lace, also known as wild carrot, is a plant I’ve loved since I was small, when I was told it was a weed and not the lovely flower I saw. I still find it odd that a weed is named for a queen’s delicate lace, it’s tiny dark red center poetically representing a drop of blood from her needle-pricked finger. Apparently, it also bears a close resemblance to the poisonous hemlock, and one is cautioned to be careful if planning to eat it. This is not a weed. It’s a short story on a stem. What makes a weed and what a flower? Who decides?
Divine Ready 