Journal excerpt

Written in Journal the end of July, 2006, 3am.

I’m lying here writing, while Keith is next to me. This is a first.

But – it’s summer. It’s late and I’m awake. I’m always taken summer nights for introspection and self-discovery.

I keep acknowledging it, but I can’t seem to start writing again. I must have made a dozen attempts or so, all single entries. Alone. Discontinued. Disconnected. I want to be more friendly with my words, my thoughts. I know that much. Funny how I can only seem to write with a pen and a book, not on my laptop. I just can’t seem to connect the same with a word processor.

I think I find the actual act of physical cursive writing both expressive and therapeutic. Despite possible font changes, a word processor cannot express the position or mood I am in like open flowing cursive. In the word processor all the letters are uniform and unvarying. The letters do not bare any expression. Mistakes and erased, misspellings are corrected as if they never existed. No memory of faults, the wrong spellings or the pen running out of ink.

Maybe that’s why I like writing with my free flowing pen. Maybe I feel confined by righteous technology. Maybe I like the rawness of just me and a silky lined paper. I like the primitiveness. I like the fact that for hundreds of years thousands of women, like me, poured their souls out into this age old non-judgemental vessel.

I like the history. I like the quietness. I like the fact that in my book, the words will not be erased my virus or incompatable software.

I love my book, my paper journal,