It's been a long, long time since I have posted anything to this blog. It's not because there's been nothing going on, but because there's been so much, or maybe too much going on. When I returned to my blog recently just to remind myself what was here, I found a draft post from a few years ago written in an attempt to reboot the thing back then. I don't even know what the post says. I don't even know if I'll read it to find out or if I'll just delete it. But here's the thing, the reason I've come back to possibly posting. Year's ago when Tom and I were still living in the city and before we had adopted Mickey, I was going through personal changes which I was trying to sort out and make sense of. Someone we knew suggested I get the book "The Artist's Way" and work through the book, doing the exercises, investigation, introspection, reflection, etc. that the book leads the reader through. It sounded somewhat appealing and doable, and I needed something.
I didn't get very far into the book because my life took off in crazy directions, but I did start it. The one thing I remember about the book was it's insistence on the reader writing morning pages. From what I remember, the "artist" was to sit at a table and hand write stream of conscious pages. I don't remember if there was a page requirement or a time requirement, but just hand write whatever came to mind. The book insists this be done first thing after getting out of bed because the student is still somewhat in the dream place and not yet protected by self-censure. I managed to write pages for about four or five days, and then I started my new job at Brown Harris Stevens real estate, and my life got immediately crazier, busier, more intense, more complicated. So much for "The Artist's Way." I never returned to writing those pages, but I never threw away the composition notebook in which I was writing. I stashed that notebook and one other into an old steamer trunk I had rescued from the streets of Hells Kitchen. I still have that trunk and a lot of the crap I have kept in it all these decades. Pains me to say that, but decades.
Last summer, I started going through that trunk and every nook and cranny in the house to ascertain what was going to be kept, trashed or hauled to the town dump for someone else to use. I unearthed my Artist's Way notebook and left it on my nightstand to read at some point. One Saturday, as I was tearing around trying to get as much accomplished as I could, I stopped myself next to my bed and said to myself, "Stop. Lay down. Read your notebook." What I found on those pages was astounding and moving. There were circumstances, thoughts, desires, emotions, theology, that I had forgotten about entirely. What I uncovered in this backward glance into my life was was something I didn't want to lose entirely. I'm 61 years old as I write these paragraphs and I am fully aware of the fact that I remember so little. If I live twenty or thirty more years - I hope to live to 100 - I want to be able to have some way of reminding myself of my past.
Do I get another notebook and start Morning Pages again? But then, when I do die, I don't want my son to have to deal with any more of my crap than he needs to. Do I write, uncensored, here? Things that get put on the internet seem to stay on the internet, but if I keep a list of logins and passwords for when I do die, then my son, or whomever, can log in and hit "Delete." And all my thoughts, just like my body, can be gone with the wind. And yet, I do believe there is something about holding a writing tool in your hand and putting pen or pencil to paper. There's something about that physical act that involves the brain, yes, but also the interior world, too, that typing on a keyboard doesn't, for some reason. I guess it doesn't really matter. It also doesn't matter if no one else reads what I write here ever. These "pages" are for me. I want to remember, yesterday and years past. I want to remember where I've been and what I've done. I forget. So, now what do I do?
There's a lot of stuff on this blog that I don't know what to do with. I don't have a problem with putting my self out into the world, but maybe it's not fair to my son to include his life here. He deserves his life and his privacy. Do I remove all past posts that aren't solely about me? But I certainly don't want to forget about my son and his life, which I already have. Just last week, I heard from a woman who had babysat for Mickey when he was very young and she said "remember when Mickey and I were making mac and cheese on the stove and we forgot and went to the frog pond and nearly burned the house down? Ah! Good times!" No, I don't remember that, but I want to. So who knows. Maybe I find a "privacy" button somewhere so that no one can access these writings but me, and the person who follows my logins after I die. Bleah. I don't rightly know. Now. Except that I'm going to write. Here. And I'm just going to see what happens.