Record Keeping

I have been awake since the wee small hours of the morning, earlier than usual even for me.  I woke up about 1 a.m. hearing noises. I came to think it was just the fridge, but by then I was awake. I even tried going back to bed—no luck.

When I came home on Friday, my spouse was in the process of killing a rat that he had trapped in the bathroom. Surprisingly, I was able to sleep through the night Friday night and the nights since. So when I heard odd noises a few hours ago, my first thought was that another rodent had gotten in.

Since I was up, I did some journaling, which was very satisfying.  It was the old-fashioned, writing offline type.  I'm going to be intrigued, as the months go on, by how my sketch journaling dovetails with my blogging and all of that with the offline writing I do--and of course, with my fiction and poetry writing too.

I am also intrigued by the much shorter writing that many of us are doing--some of us write fabulous nuggets in our Facebook/Twitter/etc. posts.  Has any graduate student studied those yet?

Here's one I wrote yesterday on Facebook, which seems an interesting mix of political commentary and journaling and a vision of an alternate/possible future:

"If I'm ever president, and I have a speech that I want people to hear, I won't disrupt their evening TV viewing in prime time. I'd give the nation a day off, and then people would be more receptive to my message. And I'd deliver the speech not in my office, but in a kitchen, at a table, set with a tea pot and some mismatched mugs and cups. Scones would come out of the oven. Oh, wait, maybe that's a different daydream, one where I'm a spiritual director waiting on the next group of pilgrims . . ."

I am amazed by how many types of record keeping I do.  It takes me back to this poem that I wrote, that was recently published in TAB.  The speaker in this poem is clearly not me--or not yet me:

Gratitude Journal



She has released the obsessive
record-keeping of her youth:
the journals, the exercise logs,
every grade she ever earned,
a neat catalogue of a life, papers filed
in folders across multiple cabinets.

In the morning, she no longer chronicles
her dreams. Instead, she fills
the feeders and listens to each chirp.
She measures the mornings in metaphor,
but she writes nothing down.
Instead of identifying every feeling,
she notes the new arrivals to the yard,
each creature and every preference.

In the afternoon, she pots the plants
that will attract the birds and the butterflies.
Once she would have recorded
every step of the process, every choice
linked with its outcomes. Now she delights
in blooms and blossoms, knowing that the next
year can take care of itself.

As the light drains from the day,
she listens to the sound
of rain on the roof. She notes
the different tonal qualities as rain runs
through the gutters and drips
into the parched earth.
She lets the rain soothe
her into sleep, no need to write
down her various gratitudes.