Flesh Made Word
Recently
I celebrated my 32nd anniversary as a journal writer. As is the case with many diarists, my
beginning was rough and uneven, characterized by fits and starts and weeks of
silence. Over time, however, my practice
developed and settled more or less into ritual.
I write early in the morning. I
write almost every day. I write about
anything and everything that comes to mind: recent events in my life and in the
world, family and other relationships, current projects, large and small
decisions with which I am confronted, and dreams.
Journal writing invites me to participate
in three dimensions of time. I write in
the present. My writing includes
recollections of the recent and long-term past.
And, at least in part, my journal is intended for the future.
Often I precede my journal writing each
morning by sitting quietly in my study - it is usually dark and the house is
nearly soundless - to center and focus my attention. What am I feeling? What thought or image rises into
consciousness? Am I troubled by a
question or problem? Is there some word,
message, or meaning lying deep inside me that wants to come out and be
expressed? Most mornings when I
eventually walk over to my desk and turn on the computer, a tool with which I
have written my journals for exactly half of these 32 years, I do not know how
I shall start my narrative or about what theme or question I shall write. The path I shall travel with my forthcoming
sentences and paragraphs remains obscured.
I am living in the present. And I
have learned over these many years that the present moment is a deep and
mysterious cosmos unto itself,
one which invites mindfulness and a spirit of exploration.
But the past - both recent and distant -
is an important constituent of the present.
In the act of
remembering I call upon people, events, and feelings that helped to construct
the stories which make up the larger narrative of my life. Through the miracle of memory I transport
these people and events forward in time.
Journal writing helps me to build bridges to past experiences and
express the meaning of these events and relationships in my current life. In
the act of recollection, I am able in good measure to “re-collect” parts of my
life that had been left behind.
Remembering and journal writing help to make me whole.
And the future? In some ways this daily practice casts an eye
to what Ernst Bloch called the “not yet.”
Keeping a journal will give me a chance, some distant day, to read my
own life. Although I am still in my
active (and perhaps too busy) “high middle years,” I look forward to the time
when the shadows will be longer and my movements more still. In my later years I hope to sit for long
periods and visit with my many manila file folders filled with journal
entries. I look forward to casting a net
across the horizon of my adult life span and harvesting, even if only in small
measure, the joyful, startling, tragic, challenging, and sublime moments that I
managed to express in my daily writing.
I shall recall names of people long lost. I shall once again encounter the shades and
textures of events experienced in my youth and middle years. It is my hope
that, upon re-reading my life, I shall gain insight, make connections, see the
whole landscape, and perhaps even, to quote T.S. Eliot, “know the place for the
first time.”
My journals, and
the future they portend, also invite the question of audience. In my reading journey with these chronicles
and reflections, I expect to be my own best audience. But what about my children? Grandchildren? Will they be interested in reading about
their father and grandfather and the thoughts he managed to set down on paper
over his adult years? Will their lives
provide them with the time and curiosity about their family history to want to
make even a modest effort to read these reflections? And if not my own children and grandchildren,
will others - perhaps
their children whom I shall never meet -
show interest in these reflections, these times, this singular life?
Sometimes I think it is merely an act of
hubris to imagine that future generations will care about my life and
writings. Each of my progeny will have
his own life to live and express. But then
I think about how much I would have enjoyed and benefited from having parents
or grandparents who kept a journal. To
enter their private lives and discover the bonds – even beyond those of blood –
we share as members of the Brady and all other human families. What did my grandfather think about the Great
War in which, although of eligible age, he did not fight? What were my father’s experiences during the
Second World War in which he did fight (beginning at the age of eighteen)? What were my mother’s thoughts about my
father when she first met him or about her eldest son when I first came into
her life? Unfortunately, my family never
discussed these important matters, nor was any of it written down, so I can only
surmise.
In the end my
thousands of pages of journals tell a story.
Unlike a well-crafted novel, this book is not seamless with artful
transitions. It is roughhewn and spotty.
In places it provides too much detail about minor matters and in other
places barely paints the parameters of dramatic and important episodes in my
life. At times my journal is petty with
complaints and judgments. But at other
times it is lucid, generous, and forgiving.
More than anything else, however, 32 years
of journal writing have helped me to take the basic
elements of human life – its sinew, bone, and blood – and transform them into
something even more magnificent than they already are. By struggling to write my day-to-day life I
have gained a deeper awareness and appreciation of its unfathomable mystery. I have touched what at times feels like the
spiritual and the eternal. My journals
have been, are, and I trust will continue to be the core ingredient in an alchemy
I experience
every morning in the dark quietude of my study as I sit at the keyboard: larynx made voice, experience made
expression, flesh made word.
E. Michael Brady