Know Thyself (Gnothi Seariton)

Why does the human being ask this question?  Not “Be Thyself,” but know thyself.  Not live instinctively, but know that one is living, with inner consistency, from moment to moment through every day.  Not “acting out” some assumed role, but living it, with alive awareness, with consciousness of oneself in that unfolding stream of time, sometimes so completely that any sense of time is lost.

How does one come to such an awareness of our true self?  What if one finds qualities about the true self which are ugly or abhorrent?  Presumably one confronts them – accepts them – perhaps changes them, or not.  We do have choices.

And what is the true self?  Is it immutable, non-changing?  Or do we grow by change?

Is contentment a sign of finding the true self?  Perhaps it’s just comfortable – like an old shoe which fits the foot, but is worn out at the sole and run down at the heel, no longer offering real comfort, but rather the easy or lazy down-trodden habitual way.

One can be and not know.  But knowing-ness means putting it into words, bringing whatever is felt into awareness by giving it life and recognition in words, from the abstract to the verbal concrete.  It’s language which communicates, both to others and to ourselves – it’s words which reveal the inner self to that outward state of awareness.

One exercise is to cut away the clutter and find one word for understanding.  If you are asked to describe yourself ten years ago, in one word, what would that word have been (not a role – like “wife” or “father” – but a word which describes you). 

Twenty years ago?

Before that?

Now?

In future?

What word do you want to become?

Some Words of Encouragement:

·        Who you will be in the next five years depends on three things:

~  The books you read

~  The people you meet

~  The choices you make

·        There is a story about a Navajo grandfather who once told his grandson, “Two wolves live inside me.  One is the bad wolf, full of greed and laziness, full of anger and jealousy and regret.  The other is the good wolf, full of joy and compassion and willingness and a great love for the world.  All the time these wolves are fighting inside me.”

“But grandfather,” the boy said, “which wolf will win?”

The grandfather replied, “The one I feed.” [The Year of Pleasures, Elizabeth Berg, p. 165.]

Help Save Endangered Skills

How quickly things come, change, transform, morph, and disappear.  In the course of one lifetime, we can, and do, celebrate new ideas and methods, new efficiencies, processes, materials, and capabilities, which better our lives, bring interesting inventions or labor-saving devices, fun entertainments, voyages to the moon, and a wealth of information data we never thought possible.  I remember as a child, a family member told me about some new invention which “could send pictures invisibly right through the air into our homes,” a concept which was both intriguing and incomprehensible to me, and now there is the ubiquitous television in every family.

     However, in the excitement of the new, there is also a sense of loss of what came before.  It is more than sentimental nostalgia.  It is the gradual loss of context, the quality which can enrich our awareness of the “now” in our daily life.

     And, along with source materials such as photographs, stories, newspaper archives, etc., that journals can help to preserve that context to the passage of our world.  I can go to a neighborhood garage sale and see a tool, and I ask myself, “What is this?”  What is it used for?  How is it used?  When could it have been made?  And it starts me on a journey of discovery which usually ends by a journal entry, with a drawing or picture of my discovery, and any information about it.  Perhaps, if all goes well, that journal entry may be a wonderful source of information for someone 200 years into the future.  Those entries which we make today become the treasures for future generations.

     In a recent discussion in the journaling class, we took a look at our lives today and brainstormed some things which are not quite yet gone, but which we feel are swiftly passing, in the hope that readers will join us in recording in our journals things which we want to help preserve. 

     To my surprise, everyone came up with Cursive Hand-Writing as their first response.  And I remember that not long ago, as a teacher, I was helping in a classroom, and the children were fascinated by watching me take my notes in swift cursive words.  I explained that cursive writing was taught a required skill when I was a child.  In school classes from about 1890s to 1950s, students in the U.S. were taught cursive writing using the “Palmer Method.” This in itself replaced the former, beautiful-but-intricate Spenserian system, as it was deemed a more efficient method for future use in the business world.  Now, with the successive use of typewriters, computers, and keyboards, even the cursive Palmer Method is no longer taught.  Even hand-written “Thank You” notes are unusual these days.  Such a loss of sensibility and courtesy to the world.  And with this in mind, it is my personal choice to maintain my cursive writing in my journals as a personal gift to some reader in the future (assuming they will still be able to read such archaic writing then).

Some other ideas which came out of the discussion are:

·        Cooking skills: cooking “from scratch,” canning, baking, preserving, etc.

·        Textile skills: Ironing, sewing, crocheting, quilting, darning, etc.

·        Trading and “haggling”

·        Tools from many trades and skills

We would be interested in hearing more suggestions from any readers of this blog.  What would it be a good idea to preserve for the future?  What can we record, explain, document to others which would help to provide future readers with the context in which they will dwell?

Some Words of Encouragement:

v     “I have drunk from wells I did not dig; I have been warmed from fires I did not build; I have been shaded by trees I did not plant.”  [Anonymous]

v     “Although I have been collecting for over thirty years, I still find it hard to define exactly what it is I collect.  The most fundamental definition is that the items in the collection were produced by solve everyday problems; to make a task simpler or easier.” [Ingenious Gadgets by Maurice Collins, p. 6.]

v     “Everything old is new again.” [Folk saying]

v     “Look closely.  The beautiful may be small.”  [Emmanuel Kant]

v     “Lost, yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes.  No reward is offered, for they are gone forever.”  [Horace Mann]

Journal – A Place of Safe Deposit

[Note:  I have held back on this blog entry in order to obtain the permission of the person it concerns before publishing it.  Cornerhouse.]

     A member of our journaling group recently brought in a story to share. She explained that this was not an “ordinary” sort of entry, and that perhaps it did not belong in her journal, but that it might be better to keep it in a “special” journal, separate from the daily one.  In order to better understand, we asked her to read it, and I share this account on Cornerhouse with her permission. 

     About two years ago, this person was badly hurt in an automobile accident, resulting in a broken back, and her recovery has been slow and painful.  The day she brought her story to us, it was the two-year anniversary of the accident.  It is simply titled “The Blue Car.”  It is her memory of the accident, but told from the point of view of her concerned and loving little car.  It was a sensitive and moving account of an awful event in her life.  We all agreed that it was more than interesting, well written, and unusual, and that perhaps she might like to start a creative writing journal for this and other stories she might want to write.

     When the next week came around, she said that she had, indeed, started her creative writing journal.  In addition, she said that when she wrote the story, she had felt confused, emotional, and reluctant to revisit this experience in her life, but that using the Blue Car to talk about the event had helped her in ways she did not anticipate.

     First, it was a way of thinking about a deeply disturbing experience, and at the same time distancing herself from the pain. Second, it allowed her to record her memories of the event, while “putting it away” in a “safe place” where she could revisit it if she ever would want to.  And third, after two years, it was a way to re-interpret what had happened in a new context.  Now, she could set it aside, safe in her journal, and could take a more balanced and positive outlook.

     This is not unusual.  It often happens that journals can serve to bring new insights, perspectives, understanding, even wisdom, as we sort out our life experiences in the safety of our personal journals. 

     This was written in the first person (i.e., the car), but there are other styles which could also be used.  A scene in a play, for example, in which there are characters and dialogue, discussing an event.  There might be a comment section at the end, or suggestions to the self about what to do in similar situations encountered in the future.

     In effect, using journals as a tool, we can teach or heal ourselves from the strains and pressures of daily life. 

Some Words of Encouragement:

·        “[We] begin the way most diaries begin: all at once, with a rolling up of sleeves, an intake of breath – and a here goes.” [A Book of One’s Own by Thomas Mallon, p. xviii.]

·        “A breed apart from the diarists who write simply to collect the days or preserve impressions of foreign places are those who set out in their books to discover who they really are… Some of them are after the sight of God; others are out to realize their full ‘potential.’ Spiritual or otherwise; and some of them are carrying burdens of suffering they are unsure they can shoulder – they want to use their diaries to test, and to add to, their strength.” [Ibid., p. 75.]

Living in Someone Else’s Life Stories

This week I received a phone call from the owner of one of my favorite used book stores.  She knows that I am interested in old books, particularly old journals or books which are good candidates for re-binding.  She told me that she had received a box of books, but some in such poor condition that she could not take them?  Was I interested? Yes, indeed!  She brought out a small box.  There were two children’s books, good shape, but in need of new covers or liner pages, one old joke book (c. 1890) in tatters (the jokes were typical of the era and show that our ancestors had quite a sense of humor dealing with things of their day), and one volume which was badly treated but with nice engravings tipped in.  Anyway, I brought them home.

This encounter reminded of the Prologue of Alexandra Johnson’s book Leaving a Trace.  I’m picking up her narrative, abridging a bit, as she relates, “The woman who kept the journal, I was told, had lived in the house I now own…A woman who wrote in her diary in 1895, plotting her life in sepia ink.

     Could she have imagined how a century later someone in her own house would be fascinated by the clues she left of a life that probably seemed immensely dull to her at the time?  (I imagined her scribbling in the journal like homework, the task… vaguely improving.)… What happened late that summer of 1895?  Did Charlie vanish?  How did he finally break her heart?  I hoped that heartbreak wasn’t lurking in the unexpected: those pale gray eyes of her close friend… Toward the diary’s end the handwriting is frantic – the loops of the l’s swell like lungs bursting.

     As I closed [her] diary, I thought about how, if we can’t keep diaries ourselves, we still love reading others’, eavesdropping on lives… In private moments, her hand recorded what I’m sure her brain constantly told her was of no importance: her life.  From her journal I knew hers was a quiet but hungrily alive life.”

We all have stories to tell – our lives lived out from day to day, our own life stories.  We can edit the details, if we must, but who is to know ahead of time what will be interesting or important at some point in the future.  It is a great loss to the life experience of the world, if it has not been written at all.  The value of the days of our lives on, kept in the treasure chest of our journals.

Some Words of Encouragement:

v     “A diary is the missing link in creative life.” [Alexandra Johnson, Ibid., p. 12]

v     “.. The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another;…” [J. M. Barrie, diary]

v     “Do not be too timid or squeamish about your actions.  All life is an experience.” [Ralph Waldo Emerson]

v     “Every one of us has in him a continent of undiscovered character.” [Charles L. Wallis]

v     Remember to laugh. [CR]

v     Q:  What makes the hour glass small in the middle?

A:  To show the waist of time. 

Queen Victoria's Diaries

This article is quoted from the BBC - 11 May 2014 

Queen Victoria's diaries on display at Windsor Castle

Queen Victoria produced a huge amount of correspondence 

Queen Victoria's early diaries are to go on show at Windsor Castle. 

The then Princess Victoria was given her first journal by her mother, the Duchess of Kent, in August 1832, when she was 13 and about to be taken on an educational tour of the country.

It was the start of a passion for writing that would span a lifetime.

The diaries are to be displayed at an exhibition from next Saturday marking the centenary of the royal archives housed at the Round Tower at Windsor.

The 1832 tour, which also served the purpose of allowing the public to see their future Queen, began with a visit to to Powis Castle in Wales .

The visits also took in the newly industrialised Midlands.

It was an unfamiliar sight for the young princess, who describes in the first pages of her new diary "I can not by any description give an idea of its strange and extraordinary appearance.

"The country is very desolate every where; there are coals about, and the grass is quite blasted and black. I just now see an extraordinary building flaming with fire."

She also writes of the "large and dirty town" of Wolverhampton where "we were received with great friendliness and pleasure".

Princess Victoria's recording of her studies the following year shows she would spend half an hour each morning writing in a journal, before lessons in history, geography, Latin or general knowledge.

By the time she died in January 1901, Queen Victoria had written more than 43,000 pages within 141 journals.

She also corresponded with members of her family in Britain and Europe, as well as ministers, ambassadors, heads of state and the Church.

Brief diaries were also kept in Hindustani, which she began to learn in 1887, 10 years after being made Empress of India.

The vast amount of personal and official material prompted the setting up of a permanent home for all documents relating to the Royal Family and Royal Household, at the Round Tower in 1914.

Queen Victoria's first journal is among the 25 documents at the exhibition, which will run until 25 January next year.

But only 13 of the original volumes of the diaries, dating from 1832 to 1836, survive. Queen Victoria had instructed her daughter Princess Beatrice to produce abridged copies of the remaining volumes before destroying the originals.

The then Princess Victoria's first journal is among the documents on display until next January

Go to: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-27360620 for some related photographs showing her diaries.

In Questions Lie Answers

Have you ever been flummoxed by the blank page?  Does it sit there with it’s blank, bland authority saying, “Speak to me!  Write something, anything, get on with it!”

Well one way to get the ideas rolling is to ask a question.  I have been a teacher all my life.  In the classroom, there is nothing like a question to open up the discussion.  Along with Joseph Albers, I believe that “… teaching is a matter of asking the right questions rather than giving the right answers.”  And in journaling, there are no bad answers, just your answers.  So I am, and have always been, a collector of questions.  I need them.  It’s the questions which stimulate interesting answers.  And when the question gets asked, the answer sparks and ideas flood into the mind. 

The designer Bruce Man once said, “I am interested in the moment when two objects collide and generate a third.  The third object is where the interesting work is.”  There is adventure and discovery in the edges where things come together in questions and answers

So A Few Useful Questions to Spark Ideas

?  The classic ones:  Who? What? Where? When? Why? How?

?  If you could rework yourself for one weekend, what would you do?

?  What was the most important thing you learned in school?

?  What thing of significance happened to you this day?

?  What insight educated me?

?  What kindness did I find?

?  What progress did I make?

?  What surprised me today?

?  What moved/touched me today?

?  What inspired me today?

?  What do I think about _____?

?  Where does this come from?

?  Why do _____ do that?

?  How can/did this _____ happen?

?  How old was I when I saw _____?

?  How does a _____ work?

?  Where does laughter come from?

?  How did you spend your 12^th/____  birthday?

?  How do you play tiddly-winks?

?  Where can we go for a one-day vacation?

Some Words of Encouragement:

v     Let the questions tease out answers.

v     Let the answers tease out new ideas.

v     Follow the new ideas “at the edges."

v     Be grateful for new adventures.

v     Remember to laugh.

 

Journal What You Love

 Journal What You Love

So much of our lives is focused on the flow of daily minutia that we lose awareness of the value of these priceless details buried in everyday life.  Whatever it is that occupies your life’s experiences, has value.  Even journal entries which at the time seem to have meaning only to ourselves, when re-read at a later time can, in a strange and creative mirroring effect, reveal ourselves to ourselves.

Thomas Mallon mentions this in his book on journaling,  A Book of One’s Own, “The makers of earthly objects of beauty have needed books in which to sketch and brainstorm, private pages on which invention’s audacity can fly or fail, where the words and shapes and rhythms and systems that educate humankind’s sense and imagination can first come to life. . the books in question so often hesitate and shift between the person and the professional.  In some of them notes for projects are crowded by reports on romance and the weather; in others, more sober ones, the subject matter is more strictly, … the creative business at hand.  Just as the distinction between journal and diary eludes clarification, the point at which a diary becomes a notebook, and vice versa, is difficult to locate.”  [p. 119-120.]

Mallon then goes on to explore how individuals, both famous and unknown, express their personal impression and experiences in their journals.  He quotes from a vivid journaling example of an intense three-month period of experimental dance choreography in the life of Martha Graham.

“…Martha Graham intended to publish her memoirs, most of which she had tape-recorded; her notebooks were given to her publishers only to be of assistance to them in editing the autobiography.  But the means looked even more interesting than the historical end they were serving, and the Notebooks were published themselves.

   …They show creation hurrying on to fulfill itself, too busy to stop for conventional punctuation and vaulting over dashes instead.  Graham’s thoughts come very fast, and her transcriptions of them end up being cryptic and abbreviated even to someone familiar with her dances. … The notebooks are a great gathering of scraps that will soon be melted down and set dancing. [She is] trying to figure out what she has on her own mind.  Sometimes she won’t even know what that is until after a work is already on the stage.  One night during a performance of Deaths and Entrances she suddenly apprehends the meaning of witchcraft and realizes what the ballet she has already made actually means.

   … The journal that came out of those three months is instructive to the nondancer about such dancers’ difficulties as obsessions with mirrors; ‘neurotic eating’; ignorance of money; fears of early retirement; and loyalty to each other versus devotion to the late George Balanchine…” [Ibid., pp. 155-157.]

Some Words of Encouragement: (Sorry, sources lost in time.)

v     Forget your mistakes but remember what they taught you.

v     The school of experience has no vacation.

v     All things are difficult before they are easy.

v     If things are dark enough, you can see the stars.

v     Q:  Do you know how to catch a special rabbit?

A:  Unique up on it!