Let Your Honesty Shine Like It Shines on Me – July 20, 2000
Written on the plane ride home from Mexico. Written after a particularly difficult year in college, written after a particularly heartbreaking summer.
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. . . Ten more pages to go, including this one. I probably will finish this before the 25th. Too much has happened to not write. If I sit down and reread this, I’m sure I’ll see bits of wisdom in my words. It’s been a long, trying month, filled with some difficulties I had hoped to never encounter again. Here we are on the second flight, heading towards Detroit. Thank God, it’s getting closer and closer, our home state. I am so grateful to be on this plane, I can’t even begin to describe it. I wonder what’s expecting me in Michigan. What the hell has happened in the world of hockey, what’s happened with my friends and the front desk, what has developed in regards to life overall. Listening to music and writing should hurry time along. Really though, what a curious thing it is I’m doing. After all, I’m writing down my thoughts, giving them a sub-physical and sub-tangible existence! What drives people like me to apply ourselves and put to paper our innermost feelings about events, others, ourselves? What is this need that we feel to document (for ourselves or posterity) what is happening in the present moment? Or is it even the present moment, since I thought of this sentence a good deal of time before I could jot it down. Already it’s lost some of its flavor, having been the past as soon as my moves onto the next word and the ink spills upon the page. Is it vanity or the true desire to leave behind something that others can use to deduce what exactly it was like, flying in an American Airlines plane on July 20, 2000, at 7:53pm? Interesting quandry, this seems to be. What compels me to write? Well, for one, I adore seeing how ink bleeds onto a piece of paper, thick and permanent for all the world to read if I so desire. Second, I enjoy playing with word tremendously. Ubi sunts, alliteration, rhyme, anapests, etc . . . I love these devices that allow me to spin words into patterns that make your voice dance and skip. Third, writing gives me power – voice and authority. In this moment, on this paper, and with these words, I am the most right person in the world. I am giving birth to my reason, logic, hope, dreams, fears and happiness. And there is no human being alive who can question or vehemently contradict my feelings and emotions. Fourth and final reason – I love language. It’s fundamental communication, even though only I am reading this. What it boils down to is how writing further inspires me to reach towards other people and (most importantly) my inner self. Why this treatise on my writing? Dunno. This journal, and finishing the last, has inspired me to write with heart and introspection again. My last journal was a task – I did not want to write anymore in that volume of lost dreams and futile hopes. But determination pushed me and the journal – those dreams and hopes that were impossible encouraged me to explore other venues of happiness that I had not considered in the past. By finishing those pages, I learned that overcoming even the most heartwrenching obstacle is possible. This journal was akin to a surprise dropping out of the sky – how to avoid entrapment into that pit of annoyance, pain and despair. I successfully battled that task, it was an amazing and awesome feeling to know I was stronger than the one who fought to bring me down again. This journal has allowed for an insight into my strength that I had only imagined in my “literary snob” dreams. This whole day of writing (well, at least since 7:53pm) has been one of mulling over my literary abilities.
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It’s weird, but thinking about those Summer 2000 days fill me with two things: The hope I had then, and the sense of utter defeat I had when the last day of classes rolled around that April. I remember being happy (there was a lot of fun had that summer), but also being so sad that I went to sleep crying every night (and I hate to cry). It’s one of those times in your life when you remember it perfectly – every taste, sound, person, event. This journal in particular (dated from June 25, 2000 to July 25, 2000) seems to have a sort of presence and tone that makes me remember everything. There was something about that summer, and I can’t quite put my finger on it, that changed me radically. I periodically go through times of extreme change (1997 was another year) where I can look back and know that I was changed, but I’m not sure what did it. I guess that’s why I love to write in journals. They allow me to go back and rediscover who I was (and can never be again). Of course I can never point to something and say, “Yup, that did it.” But it helps bring back those times. The WordNerd of 2000 was just . . . different.
Finding this entry made me remember what it was like to write with something akin to conviction. I hope to rediscover it, too.
