The journal I keep in my car

I glance at my car diary and am entranced by the snippets of thoughts I find there. The gushing emotion. If I’ve bothered to record a thought in this diary, it’s an urgent one. Often scrawled while the car is moving, and the handwriting attests to it. I love the juxtaposition of thoughts and I think, Transcribe as is and submit it (as if someone would publish it -- ha ha!). 

It's a snapshot of my life as seen through the lens of one particular document, my car journal.

Absolutely obsessed with idea of publishing an excerpt of my diary. Such egotism! I guess it’s just I find inspiration in it (if I’m able to find an excuse). Would others?

Without further ado, here are recent excerpts of the journal I keep in my car:

Oct 9 2015

“Last night, a terrible fight,” the redux.

Except it was yesterday afternoon, not last night. Isn’t, then, the problem me?

For the short story “Westshire”: The two trees growing outside the window. At first, they are distinct plants flanking either side of the window in the front bedroom, a perfect frame for the panes of glass. Later, he sees they need to be trimmed. The leaves of the two trees are beginning to converge. At the end, when the two trees have blurred into a mass of foliage obscuring the front window and casting the room into permanent shade, he’s given up the idea of trimming them. It’s no use now.

Oct 10, 2015

For my next Bennington assignment: how do I write a novel like Teju Cole? (As if)

Add to the reading list: “To Have and To Have Not” and “Death in the Afternoon.”

Also, add to your other diary: teaching Leo to sing “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” after watching the clip of the old James Cagney film. Parenthood at its best – 'Here is something I love and now you love it, too.'

Oct 12, 2015

The babysitter calls me at work and I hear his voice down the phone line, tiny, bewildered, “Mommy.” Then again, “Mommy.”

Oct. 30, 2015

I think I’m losing my fingerprints.

Nov 11, 2015

Listening to “Casta Diva” on the stereo. Oh Maria Callas…

I think he senses my distraction. I think of the pat on my back (self-administered), ‘Look at me, not as addicted to digital devices as other parents.’ But what of it? I’m still distracted, constantly, thinking mainly about my writing, and he senses it, even if he cannot possibly guess at the cause.

In my own version of “Casta Diva,” she says, “My life is a fuckin’ opera. One long opera.”

Nov 20, 2015

Another night of only five hours of sleep, and my mind is so alive. Skipping from thought to thought. Tired, yes, but alive, and thinking.

Nov. 28, 2015

When do I start writing about Atlanta?

“Spaghetti Junction”

“Suburban Chinatown”

Then I remember something Mike said about Leo. “Lui’s bravo.” [Lui  is bravo] Atlanta – where our world was born (or re-born).

Dec 4, 2015

Obsessed with Adele’s song “Hello.” Watching her performance on Jimmy Fallon over and over. And it’s revived another dormant obsession. That New York is the center of the world. A sense of missing out. A sense of being outside the action. Or simply just, I miss New York.

Dec 6, 2015

Still listening to Adele’s “Hello.” What happens when you get ‘beyond sorry’? When ‘sorry’ doesn’t even begin to atone for what’s been done?

Dec. 11, 2015

He’s sucking his fingers. Worrisome, but still better than if he were twirling his hair.

Dec 15, 2015

My interest in foreign worlds completely intoxicates me sometimes. Listening right now to the BBC World Service on WABE and thinking about Italy, and more graduate school studies, and Irene Chias’s book. Troppo.

Dec. 16, 2015

Driving to HLN, recovering from a cold, I see visions of a young priest on a class trip to Italy (a la St Anthony’s chorus trip). He seems lost, emotional, secretive, having a crisis…having an affair? He’s seen spending a lot of time with one young female student…but it’s not as it seems.

No date

A fire in the mind, no question. An unabashed embrace of my intellectual passions. A life of letters in the making (I hope, I hope).