This daily archiving series is about organizing and dating my journal collection, as well as acknowledging the self-directed violence as important therapeutic shadow work. Processing my projections and darkness. There is much joy in the pages, as well, and certainly in the daily life “behind the scenes.” The blood and guts of family life.
See:
Unnecessary Violence Project Explanation and Sample 1 Oct 21, 1992
Today: Journal Start Date October 23, 1995
Cover
Sample Pages
Sample Writing
October 28, 1995
Here I start – writing down the meat, the stream – cleansing words will come pouring out – some lost before my physical hand has a chance to catch them… I advocate all day for my children’s needs, maintain the household, deliver and pickup and in the midst maintain my art. My mind is full with images that want to be created. Fin-de-siecle, medieval alleys, dark castles, dripping blood and velvet. Women lay chaste and exhausted, yet wide awake eyes…
October 29, 1995
It is now Sunday evening and I have not had 2 seconds free today to read, sew, draw, sit, let alone write down “the map of my interior.” We are about to watch the Simpsons Hallowe’en special.
October 30, 1995
Monday morning. Kids at school. Cleaning and laundry to be done. Carbella behind me on the couch watching the sunny cold world outside the living room window.
I always think these thoughts should be deep and profound. Gems of insight that make the reader applaud in recognition, despair, hatred, love, understanding. But fuck all that. These journal entries are simply my own. For me. As pen moves on paper, I enjoy watching the ink come out of the tip… these simple lines put together in simple patterns can convey emotion, life! The human mind is truly a miracle in it ability to communicate such complex, abstract concepts. Today, I would like my shoulders to be free of tension, free of migraines neuralgia, free of thinking, free of worry. I do not need to worry! It doesn’t accomplish a goddamn thing!
The sun is streaming through the window casting light and shadow onto this page. It is also peaceful. I pick cat hair from my black shirt. Feel my toes – always cold. My bowels gurgling. My intestines aren’t up to par these days. I feel the innards reflect a state of mind, and their gurgling is desperately trying to tell me something.
How grateful I am that mom and I have a new bond that is positive and happy and seems unbreakable, that IS unbreakable… the sourness in my stomach is simply that. A sour stomach that need no have reasons to exist. Need only be acknowledged and dealt with. To detour.
November 1, 1995
My mind needs a break, to slough off the influences of the day. A mind free of all the women in my “out there” life – teachers, mothers, peers, principals, etc etc women, women, women… No wonder I want to draw sleeping women, dead women, collapsed women – – quiet women.
November 2, 1995
Boy, this is really quite a dull, unpublishable journal. Will Anna and Julian or their kids open this 20 plus years from now and think – “Good Lord! What a bland person!”?
To be entirely alone with just my own thoughts is very difficult. I find it very hard to just stand and wait, sit and wait somewhere without a book in my hands. The panic of letting valuable minutes disappear.
November 3, 1995
It’s 8:22 PM. I am so tired that I’d like to head to sleep right now. But then again, part of me would like to leap out of bed, whip the kids out of theirs, turn on all the lights and party down on Friday night. It is very quiet in their rooms. Should I really break their silence and chance for a good night’s sleep?
… The voice that flows through me comes from something far greater than this little event pattern called Katarina Thorsen.
November 6, 1995
A very exciting evening last night at the Grizzly game. Surreal atmosphere with 1 minute and 30 seconds left. 20,000 people were screaming. Anna and J____ with them dancing and cheering. The game was very close and exciting, and Julian was in the middle of it all with a migraine attack. I was catching his vomit in a plastic bag – then we escaped to the bathroom, then watched the rest of the game on the monitor. Julian lay asleep in my arms. Fireworks, cheerleaders, bear coming down from the sky, Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson, Jackson Five music, basketball players, seats on the floor, Tom Arnold, Arthur Griffiths, etc. Through J_____’s talent and music, we were in the midst of it all! Anna was in love with all that is America and now dreams of being a cheerleader.
November 7, 1995
Sitting at VPL Main Library. Gerbil babies were dropped off this morning. What a vicious thing to have to do. To purposefully separate children from their parents. But hopefully they will find good homes. Next step is to separate the parents. What a tragic cataclysmic day for all of us! But it is also with a sense of relief. More gerbils in the world will not be fair to anyone – especially gerbil children who would have to go to the pet store.
… Painful UBC days were brought up at lunch…
The greatest gift we can give Anna and Julian: the instinct, desire and courage to follow their hearts. And hopefully, we will make it easy on them when they do? To accept their decisions with respect and acceptance and gentleness.
November 12, 1995
I am not pleased with my relationship with this book. It reeks of conservative approach and seriousness. My personal creativity is inhibited. But perhaps that is what these pages are pulling out of me. The inhibition. It demands to be heard and dealt with. I am tempted to put this monstrosity away into the shelves downstairs…
I tried it… but didn’t get very far.
… no, didn’t get very far.
Sample Drawing
Sample Quote
“Dissatisfied with everything, dissatisfied with Myself, I long to redeem myself and to restore my pride in the silence and solitude of the night. Souls of those whom I have loved, souls of those whom I have sung, strengthen me, sustain me, keep me from the vanities of the world and its contaminating fumes; and You, dear God! grant me grace to prudence a few beautiful verses to prove to myself that I am not inferior to those whom I despise.” – Charles Baudelaire