Last week I mused about diaries kept and unkept, kempt and unkempt, pretentious and pedestrian. I was feeling rather cynical about the whole endeavor. But one reader’s response made me think again:
I kept journals/diaries as a teenager, inspired by the diaries my great-grandfather kept since he was 19 until a few months before he died at 94. In it are recorded India’s independence, the birth of his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, cases he won (he was a lawyer), progress on the books he wrote (in English–they were short stories), his first trip to England, the passing of his wife–he wrote them with every intention that they would be read by others. In fact, he kept them near his writing desk and would browse in them from time to time.
After a few “journal”-like attempts in the decade that followed, I wrote very little.
I started again a couple of years ago. They are from Moleskin and there is a page a day following the calendar year.I was motivated to start and keep them fairly updated because of the sense that days were slipping into months and into years without any “account” of them.
What did I do the summer of 2001? Was I happy? Did my back hurt? Did I take walks? What did I cook for dinner? What happened