I wrote a couple of entries yesterday that I didn’t post. It’s because I’m full of shit. I leave a lot out of my day to day and even though I’ve never kept that kind of journal, analog or digital, I’ve been particularly opaque on the Box.
Nobody who has the time to keep a daily journal has action packed days, even those who don’t keep an online journal , most folks minute to minute is tedious or repetitive or both. Though I don’t speak about being a student often, mostly because I was a poor student and don’t care for classrooms, I think I have probably told a few stories several times.
One eye opening assignment was for a play writing class, a harder class than most were expecting, still, for me, a GPA padding class and I wasn’t surprised to be the far right margin of the bell curve. The assignment was to eavesdrop on a conversation and write it down verbatim. Then write it so it would play on the stage and hand both in. I think handing both in was to insure the assignment was actually done and not invented. It’s really difficult to invent plain old conversation; it’s duller than dirt. Charisma, animation, attractive body parts --- none of this plays into a transcribed conversation. There was a lot of discussion about that assignment, mostly grousing. For me it was a revelation.
I also had this class on journal keeping. Yes, it was all around a GPA padding class, pretty much if you showed up most of the time and kept a journal you got an A. The professor had a thing about birds; the text book was Audubon’s book of dead things. In theory he sort of wanted us to take nature hikes and describe birds we ran across. It was the first time I ever kept a straight journal; I mean dates, locales, chronology. I didn’t write about birds very much, not that I don’t notice them or am indifferent, I like birds, I just didn’t feel like carrying a book around to identify which pretty bluebird was lurking in the trees.
There is a propensity for assignments to suck all the joy out of things that should be joyous. It’s why some people don’t read for pleasure or do Sudoku. It’s also the inherent fallacy in those who can do, those who can’t teach. Teaching is an art unto itself. You instill joy or suck it out, spark curiosity or stifle it, create a foundation for critical thinking or cram rote critical thinking of dead guys down kid’s throats.
I’ve treated the box differently. It has nothing to do with the box. Most of interesting observations these days and ninety nine percent of my personal insights are not for public consumption. Not mine to offer. So I’ve done more fiction and more generalized ranting than I have in the past. In the past fifteen months I’ve been divorced, moved and quit smoking. All major stress factors and whereas I haven’t kept any of that secret I haven’t been very forthcoming with how I deal, it’s simple and beautiful and I’m still not going to be forthcoming. The Box is just coincidence; any place I’d have kept a journal would have read like that; bite sized chunks missing from the narrative and spackled over with camouflage.
I saw this documentary the other day; Ghost Army. An American division during WWII made up of artists and sound engineers, diversion and guile, blow up tanks and loudspeakers playing troop movement sounds. That’s sort of how I’ve been keeping my Box. And, to tie in the play writing assignment, like everybody else, most of my days are filled with things that wouldn’t play well on stage.
It’s been a harsh winter. Ejuice is causing enough of a stir to make me nervous; it’s been a very effective way of keeping me from burning tobacco. The longing for my Oregon rarely abates, though providence has offered me a spark in this dark place. I am more involved in my grandsons life though much less involved in my granddaughters. My father’s condition becomes increasingly unmanageable. Like the rest of the universe there is mostly space between all that. My space is filled with such that makes me cagey or cryptic here, the sort of thing one expects in a journal. I like space all on its own.
Ghost army was interesting. Me not so much.
And I’m spent.
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