I have just spent the last couple of hours browsing through random pages and various entries out of the many hundreds from the journals I kept between 1976 and 1981, and all I have to say about that is ... "Sweet Fancy Moses!"
Holy crap, confirmation that I have always been mentally oddball. Some of the babble I truly have no idea about, like who the hell is this BG person that I kept bringing up so often back in 1978? I have no recollection of whom that might have been.
Reading also did, though, at times recall flashbacks of memories long since forgotten, so the perusing was kind of worthwhile just for the reminiscing. I think everyone should journal, although keeping in mind that when dead the memoir will inevitably be found by survivors, and some of which could seem a bit troubling from time to time.
That's why I'm considering handing off this volume to my kid to glance over now, while I'm still breathing; a better time for explaining myself as need be rather than worry about leaving postmortem questioning about my being perhaps nutsier than anyone ever even suspected. Most likely my best and only opportunity for defense.
Weird stuff, but I'm glad I hanged on to it all just the same. Even though some of it was surprising, like me as you please offhandedly using the word nigger. Whoa. For instance, when some nigger gave a friend a fat lip. Or when niggers were moving into the house up the street from us, or even how my friend and I went to the McDonald's but left because there were too many niggers there. All just casually commented about like that was no big whoop.
What the fuck? Certainly not like me and not anything I recall whatsoever thinking. Disturbing. Guess just a reflection of the way things were at the time I was growing up, I suppose, which is really quite sad. But if nothing else, a reminder of how far I've progressed, a reminder too of how dispiriting that so many others have not. I'm still psycho today, maybe, but at least not quite so ignorant.
Mostly just really mundane adolescent ramblings of the goings on and my thoughts, though. Handwritten is always best, methinks, a lost art these days. But I even am fond of the ones from back when that maybe not pen to paper, were straight out of the portable typewriter whenever I got the chance at Granny's. The kind with the ribbons and the hammers, the pre-ball sort even! And when you had to manually return with that lever handle thingy when it dinged. All still better than any printed out Word doc in my opinion.
I've got the hankering now I think to take up journaling again, although maybe that's not such a good idea. Documenting even more stuff to be redfaced about another thirty years down the road, probably not so wise a decision after all. I still just might anyway.
darn, i just wrote a lengthy post and it's gone. i'll come back later to repost.
ReplyDeleteDoh. I hate when that happens. If at first you don't succeed, try again (and please do.)
ReplyDeleteI journal now. Have quite a few laying around.
ReplyDeleteThe "N word." Wow. But you know what? At that time? My husband's family blew my mind (I was new to the family and a teen) when they spit it out a few times. I never used it, let alone then as my mom was dating a wonderful man...a wonderful black man. Years later I always wished I had had the guts to say something when the hub's father and sister used that word.
OH! The typewriter with the manual return! Now THOSE were the days! :)
LOL, I started "journaling" very young, in the 1960s. I did it for me; I wanted to remember, make real, my life. Nigger was said often by my relatives, NEVER by my mom, brother, or me. In fact I was called "a nigger lover." The elders tried hard to change me--no dice. My mother's quiet resolve, without preaching, was enough to bolster my own feeling. I would beat up kids (I was a "tomboy") who used the word. My mom was a typist/fast, and I was on the old machine often. I wrote and sold for a dime, a newspaper, with family gossip and events. Sill have some.
ReplyDelete(Didn't want to lose like the fan, been there many maddening times) I believe in journaling; books fill my apt., I doubt anyone in family wil every want them. I remember every name as I read them often over the years. Probably a leftover psychosis from my brother's saying I lie, make up stories. As long as aunt Vi 's partner lived, she documented via photos. I also kept cards and hundreds of letters from people. One day I know they will all end up in a dump. I did it for me. (Once I thought for my children or other family, but that dream has died.) Why are you o others surprised the n word was freely used? It still is in many white homes when the door is shut. I was shocked into reality whe I moved to Seattle in '80s thinking it would be different than Indiana. WRONG. I hope it is different now...but I doubt it. Oh, do share them now with your kid. I have my MOM's diary when she was 17---we discussed it, her crush on my father, etc.
ReplyDeleteI'm back. The short version of my initial post:
ReplyDeleteLet's say you died and the journal was found. Most likely you would have been labeled a racist. Clearly you are not.
Racism is much deeper than the use of a word. No matter how offensive the word nigger is. The use of it doesn't make a person inherently racist.
fan, I certainly am not rascist of course, nor have I ever been. I think running across stuff like that in my journals from even my teen years just a reflection of how my folks talked when I was growing up. They weren't rascist, I do think being from the south their folks and my further back family probably were and still are, the ones not dead yet. Still it was weird to read that. Of course, my mom and dad are only 15 and 17 yrs older than me, so they were still rather young at the time, too. Just wrong, though.
ReplyDeleteDiane, I think it's fascinating to read back through any sort of documentation of any of my family member's past, written, pictoral or whatever. Fascinates me. And yeah, when I went to my daughter's family's for Thanksgiving yesterday, I took my journals along and left them with her. She's like me in appreciating stuff like that, actually told me she had been collecting and saving snippets of some of my emails to her and stuff from my blog to put aside to save for her kids my grandkids some day. Yikes. I didn't have the nerve to ask what parts, my legacy could easily be tainted.
Lumina, I kind of wish I had kept journaling, so good for you keeping it up still. You know, like fan pointed out, I am no rascist nor have I ever been. Hell, if I was I sure as hell wouldn't be living in the part of town where I'm at that's for sure! Weird how I never thought anything about the word really being inappropriate so much. I mean, I'm certainly not nor want to politically correct about stuff,too many wusses taking offense about too many things anymore, but that one is so clearly bad, why it was a sore thumb when I read some of those things, myself the author.