I write in my journal often - tidbits - observations - fears - things I want goals to achieve - bits of stories from my dreams. Susan asks me to find images in my journal writing. It's strange I never thought of it that way exactly. Maybe that's why I always have this difficulty between showing the reader something rather than telling them something.
Looking at my old journals, its mostly filled with words intended to jog my memory about an image or scene. Is that fundamentally different, I don't know. I will try harder to pull together the actual image and draw it out - expand the idea of the jogging mnemonic - develop the craft that way.
I think I need to be more clear in my descriptions when I am writing to be read much later (that someone else might still be me - I don't think I would remember I wrote this unless I knew it was in my possession all these years). I suspect if my parents found a lesser known piece of my writing somewhere hidden under a box in the attic, I wouldn't realize it was me. Hey that happened already -- a Father's Day card when I was twenty. I don't remember writing it. I must have -- my picture is there. How narcissistic of me. Oh well.
More recent example, I have something written from 9th of June 2005. "The Fork Example". I have no idea what it means now. However, the same day I visited the International Red Cross Museum - so it might have to do something with that. For today's exercise, I'd like to expand on the image of postcards used during WW's :
Black and white this is all I can give you today is 85 cents
to relieve your anxiety your worry if I am alright
hold it, its 3 x 5 light in your hands, preserve it, put a magnet on it
read and re-read it
while you count on your brown and orange rosary
sitting on a garden stool pausing between weeding the rows and rows of tomatoes and zucchini
pull it out of your overalls and pray for me
while you wait for the water to boil
hope for peace my symbol of good luck coming from where ever I am
this card one of many
this multitudinous card of reproduced pictures and stamp
delivery all for 85 cents
made personal by my words my comment
wish I was there
while you are getting ready for bed, brushing your hair sitting on the soft well-worn orange ottoman we got when we moved away for the first time
hold it like a distinctive protective sign
knowing that I've dispatched all that I can
this sign of life.
-- Did you see the image of a woman sitting, spent and sweating from gardening, wearing a flowery pink lined cotton smock with green gloves and a spade next to her? The garden stool cracked and uneven on the ground? The rosary in one ungloved hand - the care-worn card in her pocket and she pulls it out with the same hand holding the rosary? --
No - I definitely need to be economical yet more descriptive at the same time. It's tough!
