Raiding the Journals

Cross-posted from LiveJournal


No, not these journals, but old, handwritten ones.

I am going through my own from 1987 (when I began keeping them) and my late Spouse's from whenever (his are in boxes out of order and I'm taking them as I get them) and transcribing them to computer.

I'm posting most of mine to a strictly private blog. But, to my delight, I am finding a number of poems — poems which I didn't at the time know I was writing. These I am making public, at my poetry blog. A lovely, lyrical entry describing my garden (in the Melbourne suburb of Beaumaris) quallfied as a prose poem without any change. Others turn into verses with minimal alteration. I was looking for memoir material, which I dare say is there; the poems are an unexpected bonus.

Some of Spouse's are going into a strictly private blog too. An account of a sexual adventure wth the lady he loved before me — wonderfully written, but his grand-daughters are a little young yet to be regaled with such exploits. A piece on all the things he ended up hating about his first wife. Two sides to that story, I'm sure, but she is no longer around to give hers, and I don't think their children, at any age, need to read that out of context. Perhaps they'll never read it at all, but I do have hopes of creating the autobiography he always meant to write and actually started.

The stuff that's fit to make public I am posting to a memoir blog he began while he was alive. I'm not attempting to put them in chronological order at this point, but my hope is that they will serve as an episodic memoir until (if ever) I can put them into a more coherent sequence.

Tomorrow I turn 75. I recently took part in a successful poetic collaboration with three other poets to produce a wonderful book. Two more collaborations with different poets (except for my LJ friend SatyaPriya who is in them all) will appear next year. And I am getting two little ebook chapbooks out in time for xmas. These faits are pretty much accomplit, and I found myself restless and bored a couple of days ago. You'd think I'd be pleased to rest on my laurels, but that's not how it works for me. I told myself — truthfully — that I have a very pleasant life, but the recognition of this fact did not change the mood. Then I decided it was time to start transcribing both sets of journals, and I cheered up at once. It's good to have a new project!

(Yes I'm back to calling him Spouse. Even though many of you know exactly who the hell I am, and in some cases that's mutual, I still cherish the feeling of LJ being a private 

sanctuary; and one reason I have been here so seldom for quite a while is that I stopped treating it that way. So I'm reverting to the veiling of identity.)