I am going to make a confession, which you will find difficult to believe, but humor me.

I have never kept a Journal.

Incidentally, I just learned that a crankpin is also known as a journal? Fascinating! that is the load bearing part in the crankshaft of an axle. In mechanical complexity, briefly, it has something to do with distribution of Stress. Fatigue causing breakdown, and I know from my Civic DX that you can drive with a broken axle, but not for very long, and should it give out, it would be potentially a fatal crash. That a lesson from years ago. Mercifully everything held up on prayers well enough to trade-in. (Incidentally, my DX was named Kocioł, idiomatically meaning "Chaos.")

Of course, I do carry a notebook. For as long as I can remember it is, aside from my calculator watch, my only accessory. But I have been adamant about not-writing.

My father kept a journal. In the most traditional sense, and it was locked. A thing of beauty, though on the outset nothing more than that everyday spiral ring single or multi-subject schoolthing. When I say it was locked, I mean no one could read it. His handwriting, so distinctive, was in a sort of cursive all caps, and in Polish. And whatever was in there, was by that barrier, safe. Not that I would dream of prying!! I did not. And he felt no need to hide. So, it sat on the table, open, an artifact of Intellect, his Pride.

What I am getting at is that a journal or diary is intensely private.

My sister kept a diary. She wrote practically under the bedsheets her thoughts and feelings about her tumultuous relationships. She fretted over who was mad at who, and with good reason. There was a lot of apologizing, retracting and redacting. Torn pages. Life must have been tough. Internally. I only can say so, again most definitely I would Not dare to pry, because she told me. I asked yes. And even when I didn't. She was so proud of her writing, an accomplishment applauded by elders like a learned trick, that she would occasionally read something aloud and watch for full effect. Adjectives. Flowers. Feelings and colors. Certainly, I listened, and it confirmed for me. I would Never keep a diary.

I would blush in private in horror.

So, what the devil would be in my non journal? well, I compromised. I kept a list.

Occasionally, I encrypted something in the corner, if the date were significant for it. But having capsuled some wording, within a few years, it was a code accessible only as a hieroglyph. If I could not decipher by surrounding doodle, date or to do list, I too could no longer read it. I could read my drawings, though in detail. I could recall for a considerable while after the intense emotion and surroundings that went into those marks. Drawing helped me figure out what I was trying to say... with that said, I have not drawn in years. I have, mostly, lost track of what I was trying to communicate.

I cast no judgement on Silence, nor empty space of margins.

Speaking has been difficult. When I was little, and growing up, I was periodically told that whatever I said sounded like poetry, and that to me sounded so foreign and complicated, and pompous that I'd rather bite my tongue. But I've grown to enjoy the words in my mind, and when I mention now that I write "all the time," it is simply that I script in my thinking, in invisibly personal conversations, parts that sometimes find their way to paper, but mostly, which grow wings and fly South without commitment for coming back.

They do from time to time. Like today, they are here again-- in afternoon shadow.

Her heart broke that day.

Called his name, no sound of tags,

his tail did not wag.

This was my 'secondary Haiku that I wrote for the cotpse challenge, by prose. But I was only able to comment it.

Also, Colornote app is amazing and has back-ups i have been using it for 10 years now. Never lost a note.

There's something depressing about listening to your favorite songs.

You feel understood by a complete stranger, but you don't even understand yourself.

It's so difficult to tell people who you are when you don't know yourself.

People say you can't love someone until you love yourself, but that seems impossible.

Love seems impossible in general.

Do people really find someone who cares about them the same way they care about that person?

Or is everyone just pretending?

Are people really happy?

I've barely felt truly happy at any point in my life.

I know happiness comes in moments, but sadness comes in waves.

The kind of waves that just keep coming and beating down on you.

Every time you think you can come out of it and catch your breath, another wave breaks on top of you.

But then there's days of calm waters.

Blissfully floating in the salty sea and thinking about nothing.

I think that's happiness.

So long on this wrenched road I've walk

Pains gone from the shards of glass and bits of metal in my feet

And the pinch and pull of rips from movement barely register from the dried patches of deep red scabs all over me.

.

To call numb a feeling is ironic

Irony having lost its comedic glow

From ironic to being "just how things go".

I've emboded failure and tasted regret

But that taste left in my mouth

Is washed away by cigarettes

Exhaling into the vacuum packed atmosphere.

A stinging twinge with a dawning thought that dances near my anterior mind.

That love and joy and life divine are lost to me in my mental fortress and isolating mental autonomy.

I owe life an apology.

I don't understand this feeling of not wanting to exist. I don't wanna die, but this isn't living. I feel numb, while simultaneously furious. I should be grateful for my life; I have all of these opportunities. Instead, I hate the school I was thrown into. I hate that my parents don't see that they're killing my love of learning. I wanna quit, drop out, give in to the academic burn out. I'm drowning in assignments that I don't understand. Internally screaming that being bilingual isn't the same as being able to fit into a different education system. I don't get the instructions, the lessons, the corrections, the questions, none of it. I have to get this done. I need to go to the bathroom but this assignment is due in five minutes. I can't take it. I wanna leave everything...

*Sigh* guess who just got her period.

Routines in routines

Scripts.

Expectations: ABC, etc

Script for Bingo, Script for Evy

• count on walk to playground

•

Taskalfa

[lie down, close your eyes, be quiet]

CPR training. Steve

Put in ticket for copier

Combat breathing. 3 secs in hold hard void expel excess oxygen.

Sternum rub. checking for consciousness

* opportunities

may need some

Building up...

we are elevated,

by responsibility

(floor plan showing likely flow of foot traffic follows)

as for Lightning, what hasn't

struck me yet

Lighting

reaches its fingers

into the crevices

of the Psyche

most electric...

There's supposedly

a little current,

just above the Cardiac

the AED will check

and if it's still there

we aren't dead yet.

{Red, orange, blue, yellow vertical scribbles}

09.06.2023

From the journal challenge @_abby_

Dear Dairy (I protest the use of "Diary"),

Today I crashed a Novena. I don't even know what saint it was for. Some nameless angel looking down on me from above, wondering why I was there. I opened my mouth to taste all the sanctifying grace I could catch--the stuff just poured down. It tastes sweet and sour, like Chinese.

After, I walked and walked, counting my steps, but not watching my step. I fell into a womanhole, which was soft and kind to me. I could have stayed there for hours, but wanted to see sunlight again, so I rose from the dead. But just in my head.

The cops all looked at me suspiciously, and I know why, but they don't. Still, they're professionals and their spidey-senses tingle at the sight of me.

I remain conflicted over mammals in general. Don't even get me started on the birds.

I'm still growin', which is what keeps me goin'. You can hang on if you want, but that's a no-go/no-grow. So be respectful.

Tonight I'm planning on a big reunion with my scruples. It's been a long time since we've gotten together. I'm sure they'll comment on how ruthless I look. ("I wonder where Ruth is?" courtesy of Firesign Theatre.)

Then all is said and done, it's usually done in that order. That's what she said. Can't wait until tomorrow, 'cause I get more every day. More what? Well, I guess we'll just have to wait and see!

Some 44 years ago I opened a new, college-ruled marble notebook and began the first of dozens of journals. They came in all shapes and sizes; sometimes I bought books while traveling to memorialize my impressions in a piece of the location. But the majority were marble notebooks.

Nearly 33 years ago, my husband saw me writing in a journal one day and wanted to read it. I declined – I had never shared my journals with anyone. He was angry and said it was his right as my husband. Rather than argue, I stopped keeping a journal.

Thirty years ago, my son was born, and my mother bought me a set of blue marble journals: to write of my experience of motherhood. Over the years, I bought many others when those were full. Each journal entry is written to my son – at first daily, eventually less often when life interfered or I really didn’t want to remember (year 12 was not a good year – I suspect I summarized the misery in a few paragraphs). I wrote about everything: what he did, what he learned, the myriad milestones, our trips, his playdates, the games we played, our family visits, his friends, funny or oddly wises things he said, the friends he made, the sweetheart, how he seemed to feel, how he made me feel… I kept a journal of his life until he turned 18 at which time he went off to college and the rest of his life. I hoped to be invited in often to bear witness to the life he would create.

The cover of the journal I bought for that final year looks like the frame for a painting. Two days after his 17th birthday, I wrote:

"My darling ----,

I chose this journal today as the last into which I will write the events of your childhood. Your seventeenth year began on Wednesday. In 2011, you will turn eighteen, graduate from high school, begin college and set upon a new path, begin chapter two or part II of the life that is yours. You will continue becoming the man you are meant to be, but no longer a bedroom away.

I chose this particular journal because the cover looks like the frame for a painting – without the painting. Significant because you will begin adding great strokes of color to the painting of your life. Also, if you look carefully, there appear to be sketches, shadows, vague forms already in the painting. We will not send you out to meet the world a blank canvas. You are already a good and kind young man. You are smart and insightful. You have had many wonderful and varied experiences and friendships that have helped you become the young man you are today. You have already begun the painting that will be your life. But it has only just begun – hence the sketches and vague shadows that will become a beautiful, vivid work of art along the way.

I love you, Darling."

A belt in the car broke and coolant has splashed throughout the engine. We are stopped on a mountain road between two rises. I noticed a vertical pattern in the rock face of a cliff some distance behind us, and similar on a smaller cliff next to us (dark gray to sand red to dark gray etc.). I wonder of this is caused by the crust contracting and folding down together, causing what was once horizontal to become vertical.

Car ran again about a mile. Power-steering quit again and smoke from hood. Radiator is spraying coolant. A Hispanic man stopped and gave us a ride to a nearby AutoZone to get replacement radiator.

I've been contending with something in my mind. It may be my "fear of drowning". Maybe it's a fear of death. Fear of the unknown--or uncertain. Fear of myself. Fear of other people. Fear of losing control. Fear of truly facing the pain of rejection.

The rain falling down on the land behind us... never have I seen something so beautiful.