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Recounting and recanting
This started out as some random jottings from the brain lining, but they all turned out to be vaguely related to this curious business of keeping a journal where other humans can see it.
That's okay with me. There are probably a few deep thoughts hiding in here somewhere, and I can always talk about Being John Malkovich later.
There's a debate on one of the mailing lists about whether a pure "slice of life" entry in a journal - today I did this, then I did that - can possibly be interesting to read, or even whether such a pure animal even exists.
I believe that if I limited myself to "Just the facts," like a police report, my words would be pretty tedious.
("Yesterday I bought a coat in the ladies' section of Lord and Taylor. It's black, some soft suedelike material, with fur in the sleeves and a fur collar.")
But who can do nothing but that? I certainly can't.
Here's the real story of the coat.
The night of the skirt episode, the weather was quite cold for November, and while my legs were fine, my upper body was shivering. I have a gap in my wardrobe: no light jackets. I have flannel shirts and other overshirts which I wear as if they were jackets, but if I want something a little heavier than those, I'm stuck. My next tier up is really only usable when the weather falls below fifty degrees.
It was even colder the next day - so I dragged out one of my coats a little earlier than planned and I was reminded of another problem: My coats are male coats. I mean, some of them are very nice-looking, but nice-looking in the L.L. Bean school of Sensitive Woodsy Male attire. I'm not sure what gives with this backwoods chic when I am a city girl by avocation, but it was clear that I needed (not necessarily all in the same garment):
1. Something more urban
2. Something more urbane
3. Something more female
4. Something a little lighter
So yesterday, on a whim, I shopped around a bit for women's coats. I didn't bother going into Saks or Needless Markup - I can't even afford to look at the price tags in those. But Lord and Taylor, while often pricy, has good sales from time to time. (You may be wondering where the Sears or equivalent stores are. Well, I'll hit those sooner or later, but you have to go out to the 'burbs for that, and I don't have a car at the moment.)
This coat is great. I wore it for a walk last night. It has that nice fur collar - fake fur, of course - and it cinches in at the waist, which is my favorite shape for garments because it makes me look like I have a waist. (I am shaped approximately like a lamppost. Any figure you see on me in my photos is artificially induced.)
Actually, I bought two coats. I knew I'd probably need to take the other one back, but I couldn't try either of them on in the store. It wasn't the salesclerk - it was the little old lady customer who kept giving me the beady eye as if I had no right to be walking around in that department at all. Biddy. And she wasn't leaving either; no sir. She smelled a rat, and no way was she going to go and miss the fun.
The other coat is full-length, completely fur-lined, and very glamorous - but there is no way to alter it to make the sleeves fit. With women's coats or shirts, fitting across the shoulders is usually not the problem - it's the sleeves. (Actually, sleeve length is a problem even with men's shirts. I have very long arms.) The one I'm keeping has cuffs which can be rolled down, providing the extra inch I need.
Also, the full-length coat has a strange sort of square-cut fur collar that stands up. I don't know the word for it, but there probably is one. Not a mandarin collar, but similar. It emphasizes one's neck, which is dandy unless you're me and you want to minimize that. So back it goes.
Today I woke up all prepared to wear my new coat where other people could see it (go ahead, call me names) ... and the weather was back up around sixty degrees again. Oh, well. Its time will come.
And that's the coat story.
Now, I don't know if that story contained humor or drama, which are the things Jim Valvis says a story should contain to be interesting ... but it also isn't a straight recitation of fact by any means.
Speaking of Mr. Valvis, I really like this entry.
Of course, by saying so, I am introducing information that may be of limited use.
I wonder sometimes about the value of praise - or criticism. I mean, is your life enriched in any way by knowing that I like the entry linked above? It's important to me, and Mr. Valvis may get a warm glow from knowing it. But it doesn't tell another reader anything about whether they'll like the entry or not.
What about bad news? Bad news is even harder to justify. What if I didn't like one of his entries? Should I tell him? Should I tell him why?
All of this comes to mind because the touchy subject of critiquing a journal has come up once again. I don't believe in such critiques myself, but then, I feel one cannot and should not analyze poetry either. Not everyone agrees with that.
To me, journals work better if you treat them like poetry - they're there and either you got a kick in the head from them or you didn't and that's that. Nothing can be done, so there is nothing to say. It's safer that way.
The problem with evaluating journal entries on a critical level is that normally - with fiction, say - a crit of the piece is not a crit of the author; the two have nothing to do with each other; "I dislike your story" is not the same as "I dislike you."
In a journal, where the stories are usually about the author's life, this line is blurry. This makes people, including me, a little overcautious. And usually that caution's justified.
I mean, if I say to an author, "I think you should ease off on the entries about how rotten your love life is," what am I saying to this person? I am evaluating her journal as entertainment, but if this is what's going through her mind all the time and that's what she needs to vent about ... who the hell am I to tell her not to?
I admit it - there are a number of escribitionists I read and I say, "Y'know, I wish once in a while they'd write about something else." But people probably say the same thing about me and all the gender stuff, and I'm certainly not going to ease off on that topic - it's very much in my mind these days. So let's not fire upon each other's glass houses.
I read journals, as near as I can tell, for three reasons ... and the primary one is to be entertained. Furthermore, I believe that most readers of this medium are the same way, and I believe we should all come out of the closet. We may write journals as catharsis or offline storage, but we read them for entertainment first and foremost.
I don't think there's any shame in that.
However, I note that when someone has been writing about their suicide attempt and you've been reading it raptly, it is probably not a good idea to tell the author how entertaining their words were - even though they were. "Entertaining" has many connotations, but the author is likely to pick the worst ones in that case.
Even with something that's obviously been written with an eye to the audience, like the tour of Toni's brain ... this was a hilarious entry (more so because it reminds me of the inside of my brain), but do I tell her that? The mental thrashing she's undergoing right now is quite real. Laughing at something, for better or worse, often trivializes it.
You may want to know the other two reasons I read journals.
The second is to compare notes and gain information. For example, when Beth says that saag paneer can be better than sex, it's nice to see that someone else understands how mere spinach can be a reason to search out every Indian restaurant in town to see who does it best. It's not necessarily big enough to write an email over, but it's interesting to learn.
When I agree with someone on a subject, that's interesting. When I disagree with someone, that's interesting too. Even when I'm not sure whether I agree or disagree - some issues are more complex than that. I'd like to have a long conversation with Susan of the Apocalypse about some of the issues she raises in this entry. It'd have to be a conversation - there's too much of it for email, even as verbose as I am.
The third reason has only come into existence recently. I have begun to get to know some of these Aether voices - I've met some of them in person, corresponded with some of them heavily - and the information is beginning to take on significance to me beyond that of a spectator.
If that makes sense. Bringing Beth into it again - I don't know Beth, although we have exchanged email. I've never met her. It would be wrong of me to make observations about her life or her habits, even though I have them (I have an opinion on everything).
I am not a friend of hers. No, no, that doesn't mean we dislike each other; in fact, in our limited contact, we've gotten along quite well. I just mean that "friend" implies a closer degree of contact than you can get through a few emails.
But this medium has brought me some actual friends. And, yes, I am more interested in the lives of my friends than of people whose journals I happen to read - even though all of them may have equally interesting lives, and may be equally interesting people. That's just the way it works.
Once in a while, they even talk about me - and that's interesting because it combines reasons two and three - not only is it of personal interest, but I get to see how someone else perceives me. Even if that perception mystifies me!
(I add that last because Lisa is now the third or fourth person to say that she was a little intimidated by my mental capacity upon first meeting me. She also implied that I led the conversation. I wish you folks would get together and help me figure out how I managed to radiate intelligence and competence on those occasions, because it beats me. I'm smart, but I'm not that smart, and in general I do a fine job of concealing what I've got. Maybe I was channelling another personality when I met you?)
One last thought. And I apologize in advance.
Shmuel writes about critiquing a poem where the author meant to say "recounting our life stories," but it came out as "recanting our life stories" instead.
This made me wonder ....
We of this peculiar medium, do we tell all these things because we want to make our lives more public, more obvious - do we want to have as many people share the story as possible?
Or do we tell these things to distance ourselves from them, repudiate them, get the events out of our heads and have done?
Are we recounting our lives or recanting them?
© Columbine
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