Wednesday October 14, 2009
shipwreck expert
If you don’t keep a journal, you should.
I don’t care if you think you are too boring or too busy or that writing in journals is for neurotic girlies or self-indulgent hand-wringers. You are wrong.
You are so wrong.
Journals are brain-dumps and soul-capsules and free-counselling and are for remembering and retaining and absorbing and cleansing and complaining and celebrating and dreaming and resolving and meandering and procrastinating and for to-do lists and recipes and sketches and ticket-stubs and pictures cut from magazines.
I remember going to a Keith Haring exhibition in Wellington years ago and sure, his art was cool - but what made more of an impression on me was a long glass cabinet with some of his many journals sitting open. I stood there for ages reading every scrawled word and longing longing longing to be able to turn the pages but there was that annoying glass in the way and god forbid I might get some of my human-muck on the pages! They were beautiful and messy and exciting, like a mainline hit of humanity.
My journals have always been important to me but lately more than ever. How can a blank A5 book with a black leather cover be so important? It just is. It just is. It’s somewhere to go with everything. It’s a haven. Lots of my poems begin there - in a scrawled observation, a repeated line that won’t go away until I write it down.
I walked into the room the other day and the TV was on. On the screen there was a pleasant looking middle-aged man being interviewed. He was talking about onions floating in the sea, about fisherwomen flirting with sailors and this writing appeared on the screen which said: ‘Shipwreck Expert’.
I immediately wrote it down in my journal. Shipwreck expert. I love that you can be an expert in shipwrecks. I have a friend who is an expert in seaweed, another who is an expert in the way diseases spread from animals to humans, another who is an expert in Kathy Acker - but to be a shipwreck expert!
I feel like a shipwreck expert. I am an expert in what to do after the ship hits the land. The bumps through the stern that you feel when you crash into the ice-berg? I keep feeling those bumps. I have holes in my side miles-wide. I think it can’t get any worse and then it does. And then it does again.
When your onions are overboard and your treasure is sinking - get in touch with me. I’ll help you through. I don’t know much except life is hard, unfair and weird - but if you write it all down and keep your eyes wide open - you’ll probably be okay.
You might even become a shipwreck expert, like me.