On Reading Old Journals

Recently I found a notebook from four years ago, it was in a box I wanted to unpack since the move. The handwriting was mine but the person was unknown.

I was anxious about things that have since resolved themselves or that I resolved, or that simply faded the way as most crises eventually do. I was hopeful about things that didn't happen.

Reading old journals is a specific kind of vertigo. You're confronted with the fact that you have always been in the middle of something. There is no vantage point you ever actually reached. Every version of you was
certain that the understanding was just around the next corner.

We're always the protagonist of a story that doesn't know it is still in act one.

What struck me the most wasn't the embarrassing parts, even though there were many. It was a small entry, just two lines, where I only wrote: Walked to the market. Bought bananas. Everything felt possible today.

I don't remember that day and I have no idea what made everything feel possible. But the specificity of the bananas, the matter of fact recording of possibility, something in it moved me more than the longer, more dramatic entries.

Maybe that's what journals are actually for. Not only the processing of the big events, those you remember. It's the small, felt moments that vanish without witness.

Written in Germany

Recently I found a notebook from four years ago, it was in a box I wanted to unpack since the move. The handwriting was mine but the person was unknown.

I was anxious about things that have since resolved themselves or that I resolved, or that simply faded the way as most crises eventually do. I was hopeful about things that didn't happen.

We're always the protagonist of a story that doesn't know it is still in act one.

Maybe that's what journals are actually for. Not only the processing of the big events, those you remember. It's the small, felt moments that vanish without witness.

Written in Germany