This daily archiving series is about organizing and dating my journal collection.
See previous samples:
Unnecessary Violence Project Explanation and Sample 1 Oct 21, 1992
Today: Journal start date February 21, 1999
Cover
Sample Pages
Sample Writing
February 21, 1999
Back home after a wonderful, intense weekend in Vancouver at our beloved Rosedale. Recall my conversations with J___. A new time in our life, the need to develop the ego, to cut my umbilical cord that ties me to my guilt to mom.
February 23, 1999
In March I go for a mammogram- my first and it does well up a lot of old memories of the parotid gland tumour. I do not want to find myself using this moment as an escape from the guilt as I continuously feel around mom. I hope I can also simply forget about it and not have that little kernel of “hope” that something is wrong, so that I am “released”… sickness is a “way out” from guilt. It always has been.
March 9, 1999
Oh, precious life! I am reprieved – healthy and well! Julian and Anna are doing so well at school. J____ is undergoing a change, a new awareness… I watch Julian’s chest moving up and down as he breathes, as he sleeps. Hear Anna’s sweet call “good night!” And I don’t need any more than this – just to love, to tend this family, and to create some art.
Sample Drawing
Sample Quote
“he sat naked and drunk in a room of summer night,
running the blade of the knife under his fingernails, smiling,
thinking of all the letters he had received
telling him that the way he lived and wrote about that–
it had kept them going when all seemed truly hopeless.
putting the blade on the table, he flicked it with a finger
and it whirled in a flashing circle under the light.
who the hell is going to save me? he thought.
as the knife stopped spinning the answer came:
you’re going to have to save yourself.
still smiling,
a: he lit a cigarette
b: he poured another drink
c: gave the blade another spin.”
– Charles Bukowski
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