Write it down

I watched Bridget Jones' Diary last night. It got me thinking about journaling. I wonder if it started a trend when it first came out, as a book and a movie. Lots of young women go and watch this movie or read this book about someone they can truly relate to and think, I'm going to start a journal! I bet book and stationary stores were quite pleased.
Anyway, I've been journaling since I was a pre-teen, and it was my Mom who inspired me. Seeing all her journals lined neatly on a bookshelf made me want to have that someday. I wrote mostly about boys in those early days, and probably well in to high school too.
There were many years when I didn't journal, it's always been an up and down thing for me. One time I tried keeping a journal on the computer, I lost interest even more quickly though. There is something about the act of writing it down, your handwriting, your hands moving quickly enough to keep up with your thoughts. There's something about having it bound in a small leather bound lined pages item.
Journaling for me has always been something attractive an special. I still go through chunks of time where I don't write anything down, but I know I always feel better when I do. A few months ago I committed to carrying my journal with me everyday and wrote on the train most mornings and evenings when it wasn't too crowded. It is so fun now to look back and read about the people I saw and how I was feeling each day. I briefly thought how interesting it would be to write for a year about riding the subway, but it became hard to feel comfortable writing when there were so many people watching.
Journals are a private thing, not something you'd want to share with anyone, especially not the weird man standing over you with his crotch in your face.
Anyway, watching the movie reminded me how much I enjoy journaling and how therapeutic it can be. In fact, I think I'll go spend some time with it, right now.

Pilgrimage

I was reading Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek a good few months ago. I started reading it on the train, and found the commotion too distracting from the rich and deep narrative. So I brought it home and put it on my bedside table. I still picked it up there on frequent nights, reading and rereading the moments in nature, earmarking pages of interest.
When I talked to my Mom about it, I realized that this want a work of fiction, it was Annie Dillard's own experience, it was her journals published.
This blew me away, as it did my Mom many years prior. I was so overwhelmed with the thought of her having spent a portion of her life this way and then being able to so beautifully and thoughtfully describe the experience that I put the book aside, and didn't pick it up again, until now.
This is a book, thankfully, you can pick up again after time has gone and not feel like you've forgotten a character, a place or a story line. You are thrust right back in to the daily life in nature, taking it in, and musing on life as it is lived around you in many forms.
I feel like this summary doesn't even do what Annie Dillard has done justice.
I want to do what she's done. I want to immerse myself in a place, an experience, a path, and then write about it with heart and passion.
I'm anxious about many things in my life right now, and the appeal of going into the wilds of Virgina and just being and writing is tugging at me.
Instead I will throw myself back in to her book for solace and maybe it will spark my own writing again, which I've put aside now for many months.

Happy 4th of July

Happy 4th of July, originally uploaded by adkcub.

Sparklers from the porch on July 4th.

Fate

As we drove up to CT on Sunday, I saw horseback riders along the hutch, and then a hawk taking off into the green forest from the side of the same road. Later on 684 I spotted a car stopped by a police officer with what were either nuns or kids dressed as nuns standing outside of it. I thought, Is this drive putting on a circus for me? What will I see next? I didn't see anything, but the way the events of the day unfolded made me think about faith and free will. I thought about the difference between believing you've been put in a place for a reason, or just happening to be there. Was I put on the road on this Sunday to see all those odd events? I believed I was even more after my trip to CT was able to instead of bring my Grandmother for a nice visit with her family, bring her to see her dying sister-in-law who was brought to the ER the moment we stopped to pick my Grandmother up 30 minutes away.
My Grandmother has lost most of her sight and can't get to see her Brother and Sister-in-Law unless someone takes her, which doesn't happen often. With their ailing health, and the 3 of them being the last of a family of 7, not only did I want to bring them together, but I wanted to visit with them too, I'm a family girl.
It was supposed to be an afternoon of sitting and talking, of packing up their anniversary china that they've gifted to Matt and me. Instead, it was an afternoon sitting in the ER, watching my Great Aunt struggling to breathe through the oxygen being pushed in to her lungs. Through all that, I was so thankful that Matt and I were there to be able to bring my Grandmother to her brother. He was clearly relived she was there, and she got to feel part of helping, instead of sitting anxiously by the phone like she's done 4 times prior in the past month when one of them has been to the ER.
Later that night as Matt and I ran I talked about fate versus free will. Part of me felt like I was fated to be there, to bring my Grandmother to her Brother, like there was some higher being pulling the strings. But then when I think about losing my Dad, there was no higher reason for that, nothing good came from that, I don't believe it happened for a reason.
Matt talked about how appealing the prospect of fate is, in that it helps you take a bad situation like that afternoon and give it meaning.
And the afternoon took on even more meaning this morning when I got the call that Freda had died. Thank God, I thought as I pushed back the sadness and dressed for work, that we were there on Sunday so Bubba could see her one last time. Thank God, or whoever and whatever it is out there, if anything at all.