SOME OF THE BEST
19 July, 1998 |
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Christmas 2000, photo by Bob Gentry ©2000 Stanyan Entertainment
A Thought for Today
A steady aim, a strong arm, willing hands and a resolute will are the necessary requisites for starting each day.
"Dear Rod, Wouldn't this be a good time of the year to repeat your Flight Plan about the importance of keeping a diary? Ever since I first read it way back in 1985 I've followed your advice and written daily in my journal. Thanks to you I end each day by reliving it in
words". Eric Labaton, Paris
THE IMPORTANCE OF KEEPING A DIARY
Life is transient. Death no better. The only thing of importance [despite computer threat and more important things to do some days] is a reasonably well kept diary. Ned Rorem goes on turning his to cash. Once out of print, he displays that best trait of writers and regurgitates the copyright to form the new and fatter omnibus. Noel Coward's daybook is gossip elevated to high art - though, I fear somewhat fudged. From Michelangelo's jottings, we learn inventions, mathematics, proposals, success, a little failure, and personals we could do without. Anais Nin's life was her calendar, or her calendar was her life. When blank pages needed filling, she wrote some pretty nifty dirty stories in the margins. Very Colette. Every book Christopher Isherwood, Truman Capote, and to a lesser degree Norman Mailer, has authored is a diary disguised. Hemingway wrote "wish diaries".
The most illuminating 'talk to myself' works by the young and courageous Anne Frank was a testament, a manifesto, and a movie of the same name. Last year after her father/editor died, the unexpurgated version of her private attic thoughts was published. The work endures. If we can believe Peter Hall, he eschewed (today's big word) exercise and dining out in favor of dashing home every night to a notebook. Once a week his solicitors cut out the good parts.
Publication and the following derision and/or acclaim are not the ultimate reason for maintaining a journal or book of days. Memory is probably the most interesting yet most elusive accounting system God has given us. The more age sets in, the more we choose to forget or commit to memory. I keep an intermittent diary because once I've pen-and-paperized a thought I've freed another brain cell or two. This allows the luxury of pursuing new and ancient loves, the knobs needed from the hardware store, the programmed changing of the cat boxes, the ongoing struggle with the garden, trying to psyche myself out of concert retirement, being a better friend to friends, etc. You get the picture. Putting it down on paper is one more road to freedom.
Keeping a diary, like sticking to a diet, is among the most difficult things in this all too difficult life - next to it, lovers and family are a snap.
- from the introduction to "Another Beautiful
Day", 1985
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BEGINNING AGAIN |
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The eternal magic of eternal things
sends the dreamer out into the world,
brings him home again.
One wind makes another.
Recent rains remind us of a rain ago.
Sunshine is the same every time
seen through different eyes,
felt to different skin,
it is still a wonder and a prize
as love and loving always is again.
I begin today. In life, in love,
in everything
the same start I had every yesterday
not concerned with where I am,
where I have been,
only where I go and to what end.
Does rain provide a resurrection
or plow a final resting place,
does love once done inhibit love,
life once lived stop life
from sprouting from a dying limb?
These must be winter questions
since answers only come when winter
comes again.
Some songs do not exist without the singer
certain rhymes are trapped and lost
on certain pages
but these are only songs and rhymes.
Eternal magic still rampages
on the inside of eternal things.
Fire. The river. Plum and cherry blossom
and the vigilance of all the visions
the dreamer carries back from traveled worlds.
I have been thinking about
the absence of love.
How useless April or December is
without another ear to turn to
or another's eyes to see
a certain wonder exactly in the way
it came to us.
A little melancholia for the final act
a bit of excess baggage shuffled off
and old coat traded in for new.
Nothing is quite
what we think it is.
Clichés become so for good reason,
the best contain a universal truth.
It is never wrong to want,
but you cannot have everything-
Where would you put it?
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from "The Sound of Solitude", 1983 |
