i went traveling last year for about 8 months. i wrote obsessively, of course, in a moleskin journal. i write extremely small, i always have. i filled the journal in about 6 months. i’ve used it to write other things since i’ve been back in the states, used it to remember things. it went missing about 3 weeks ago, and i cleaned my entire house looking for it this weekend. i cleaned my car and looked for it. where i’m living now i have no friends that i hang out with so i didn’t have to look at any friends’ houses. i cannot find it.
the feeling you get when you lose something like that is indescribable. it does get easier after the first time. i got a small book filled with contacts, about 20 bucks, and many notes and ideas pickpocketed last year in indonesia. it had dozens of people i met and notes about places to go, ideas for stories, characters, things i jotted down when it was inconvenient to write in my larger journal. when i realized it was taken it felt like someone took something out of my stomach. i asked the dope dealers on the street if they had it, told them there was a reward. i looked through all the trash bins on the street. i asked a street kid to help me for money. but i never found it. i couldn’t sleep that night.
but this time, with this journal, the same one i wrote in when i wasn’t writing in that little pickpocketed pad, i went crazy for a few hours when i realized it wasn’t turning up. and then, nothing. i calmed down. this journal, it’s not replaceable, and i’ll never be able to recover from my memory the things that i wrote in it. but i said the same thing about the little pickpocketed book, and that was almost a year ago and i’m still living and breathing. a writer depends on such things, relies on them. when you don’t have a computer to type on and save your work a journal becomes sacred, it becomes what you cling to. so what happens when you know clinging to things is what makes you miserable? i was miserable for weeks after the pickpocket stole my ideas, until i asked myself why i was clinging to it. it’s gone! nothing can be done about that. nothing will bring it back. i’ve lost this journal, the journal filled with my experiences and my writing, but why is it ok? because a journal is not what makes me a writer, and a writer is how i define myself. more writing will come whether i have the journal or not.
how are you? i hope you are well.
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