HOT GARBAGE!: January 2008

I have ideas.

It's time to ride the bullet, my internet friends: I'm tired of merely thinking about writing. I'm tired of lulling myself into some false sense of security that, once they’re finished, these crystalline thoughts will tear through the weeping eyes of my readers, stunning them into a higher form of consciousness and transcendental thought.

It’s time to stop thinking about it, and just do it.

Ideas have been coming faster and stronger as of late. Old ideas have started to reshape themselves into things more cohesive and understandable. New ideas have begun to blossom like rare hothouse flowers.

So, from here on out, I’m pledging to you, my faithful readers, that I will take at least an hour a day to write, to wring the juices out of my mind-grapes and drip them into your proverbial open mouths. I have ideas, goddamn it, and I’m going to shout them from the highest peak of the internet until the starving children in Bangladesh can hear them.

But…I’ll get started later. I think Rock of Love is on.

Last week while scouring through my closet in preparation for a yard sale, I came across a journal.

Bound in red leather, embossed with a slim, gold typeface reading “ONE YEAR DIARY”, and sealed with a locking clasp, it looked unfamiliar to me. However, I have a reoccurring habit of starting journals only to swiftly abandon them in favor of more immediate (and less thought-provoking) alternatives. Was this a journal I’d started and quickly forgot about?

I jimmied the lock. This was not solely motivated by my desire to reveal the journal’s mysterious contents; I also wanted to be able to use the phrase “jimmied the lock” in writing, because it makes my affairs sound so much more debonair and enigmatic.

Out of a possible three hundred and sixty-five pages, only five of them were covered with writing. However, instead of my own lopsided and slack handwriting, the entries were composed of a flowery, cursive script. The handwriting of a woman.

This was not my journal, I realized.

I thought about writing about how I felt while reading it: how it made me smile, remembering things I’d either forgotten or never really knew at all, and how in the end, I felt as if I’d been punched directly in the heart.

But I won’t. Instead, I’ll reproduce the five entries of the diary verbatim. Imagine yourself to be in my shoes, reading through it for the first time in the cold empty spaces of the night, and try to determine the identity of the author, just as I did.

I couldn’t have been more surprised.

Monday, January 14th, 1985.
“This is your mother’s first day to go back to work and she is crying when I come to pick you up to bring you to my house. You are smiling and as happy as can be, and I feel very sorry for your Mama that she has to leave you and go back to work. I went back to work when your Mama was 10 weeks old and I cried every day for three weeks when I had to leave her.”

Tuesday, January 15th, 1985.
“Your Mama wasn’t crying quite as much this morning, but she sure hates to leave you. You ‘chuckled’ today for the first time, Brian…your little chest moved, and you really laughed. You ‘talked’ to me and smiled for 15 minutes today. I feel lonely after you leave.”

Wednesday, January 16th, 1985.
“You were only awake for about 15 minutes except when you had your bottle. Lucille Schuman came to see you and kept saying how much she liked your red hair. Your mother came to get you at 11:45 today, because I went to my ‘Modern Study Club’. Several of the ladies at my club asked how you were getting along, Brian. I told them that you were adorable.”

Monday, January 21st, 1985.
“What a difference a week makes! Everyone is happy this Monday morning.”

Tuesday, January 22nd, 1985.
“This time eight weeks ago, your Mama and Daddy were at Good Samaritan, but you weren’t here yet. I took your Mama a little ‘dutch’ she filled with crocus and told her I remember what she was doing this time eight weeks ago. You are such a good baby, and such a joy for your grandmother.”