I used to keep diaries but now I don’t. I have boxes of old journals starting back from when I was eight years old. Now, when I feel like writing in my diary, I think instead I should write for my blog. You cannot post to your blog once a blue moon and hope to keep your readers. Some of my journals are embarrassing and I think I should destroy them before I die. Some of my journals make it seem like I am mostly depressed, but that’s because I went through long periods of writing in them only when I was depressed. Journals represent us in funny, honest, dishonest ways. I used to write explicitly about sex. I used to be very interested in my own life and obsessively document it. I kept journals of my dreams for years. Once I had a violent boyfriend and when I was trying to break up, I took all the dreams I had ever had of him, starting from the moment we met, and I wrote them out and had them bound in a little book. I thought then he would see my point. Some of my journals are funny and, occasionally, interesting. Once I thought I’d start pulling out parts of them for my blog. There is so much material! I could post every week! I tried it. I started with an entry from when Chuck and I went to Antigua so he could set up a printing press for a group called the Antigua Caribbean Liberation Movement, but we spent most of our time doing acid and then we got arrested by the Antiguan intelligence service and deported. I thought I’d start there. But my audience was confused. They didn’t read the date. They wrote to me: I didn’t know you are in Antigua!
Share this:
Categories: aging, Chuck Willer, memoir, politics, travel, writing
Tags: Antigua, Antigua Caribbean Liberation Movement, blogging, childhood diaries, diaries, dream journals, journals, keeping a journal, LSD
Alison Clement 