Next generation diarist
Does anyone else recall a time when a journal, a diary, was an intensely private possession? When it was intended for the author's eyes only, a unique space in which one could pin down on paper a flutter of abstract thoughts like so many captured butterflies? A time when it would have seemed anathema to offer for public consumption the product of what amounts to a mental bloodletting? And the diary itself - as a young girl, naturally, I had one, with a feeble lock and attendant, miniature key. The lock itself was easily disabled; it was the *appearance* of the necessity of security that made its presence vital - it fomented the vainglorious notion that the contents were manifestly important, too much so to offer to everyone, and further more, that another party would care deeply about those contents.

And now, in the year twenty-ot-six, there is livejournal, an invitation to bare oneself (and yet remain lightly veiled) on the most public of all forums. Has this supplanted (or at least exceeded) the intimate conversation? Are we so conceited that we believe all the world has a vested interest in our musings? (apparently, I do) Whence comes this need to communicate, but not connect? To type a confession is one thing; to look a man in the eye and fashion the words with your lips and breath, is entirely another.

I could never journal for one reason: I had/have an egotistical eye to posterity. Even in youth, I entertained an elaborate fantasy about my journals and letters being discovered some years hence, after my celebrated life has come to an untimely end (so the papers would report). Scholars would pour enthusiastically over my scribblings, establishing chronology, annotating, analyzing, compiling for presentation. And how would I wish to be remembered? And so, my first attempts at keeping a diary were blackened by redactions, whole lines inked out in the name of image preservation/creation. I edited and re-edited, fighting for the right word, struggling for the proper turn of phrase. It could never be my innermost thoughts, exactly; it was the innermost thoughts I hoped the rest of the world would imagine I possessed. So it became a work of fiction, and thereby was useless.

Incidentally, on the plane home from San Francisco, a furtive glance to my right-hand seatmate revealed the woman to be carefully detailing in a diary the events of her recent SF adventure, but in a most prosaic way. "Drove to X. Mr. Z enjoyed his espresso. Met couple Y." Just so, completely artless (no complete sentences!), a catalogue of what I considered largely impertinent and uninteresting events. What, pray tell, did this accounting serve? Have I missed something? Sixty years hence, in my dotage, will all the critical details of my young life be lost to the slow erosion of age, simply because I did not keep record? Is it even useful to imprison memories in print? I recall countless times rereading my journal and laughing at my folly, at my deep (and wrong-headed) conviction at that moment that I had penned something profound. And likely, in a week, I will look back on this and regret it. Better to keep quiet and be presumed an idiot than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt.

And now for something completely different: I picked up a fabulous turn of phrase from a professor: "Play as though you are It on a stick." No idea where that originated geographically/culturally, but damn, I like it.