In seeking (I am, undoubtedly, what religionists would call a seeker, in many ways) some strategies to get me out of my slough, to get me writing these two articles which are both so overdue and on the verge of being too overdue to publish, I went to Anne LaMott's Bird by Bird, which is both the most neurotic of books on writing and, paradoxically, one of the most comforting. It led me somehow to look at old journals – I don't have many but, in fits and starts over the years, I have left myself a trail of breadcrumbs (which lead back to me, I suppose). I was also looking at the old journals in order to cheat! - to find something I'd once written that I could put into this blog, since I didn't feel like writing anything new (two aborted posts are still waiting to get written, or not as the case may be).
It was strange to look at the old journals – amazing, and frustrating. They form several broad groups – there are the early, oversized accounting books from 1975-80 (when I was, let's see, 18 to 24), which are insanely primitive from an emotional standpoint; they do however show a remarkable number of collisions with men, most of which I'd forgotten, and most of which I handled very, very badly indeed (hmm, not much surprise there). These oldest journals are by someone in such pain and confusion – it is lacerating, and frankly embarrassing, to even glance at their pages.
Actually, though, those aren't the oldest – the oldest is my charming, pretentious literary scrapbook from when I was about 14, which is both ridiculous and kind of wonderful – very clumsy, but aiming very high; such refined interests, but such a lack of awareness of the resonance of those interests – I wish I could support that kid somehow, as I wish the 1970s kid could see a good therapist, someone he could trust, who knew how to encourage a young gay person.
(The scrapbook shows a lot of my sisters – a watercolor by my eldest sister, some woodblock stamps by the younger – and, in many other ways, it shows a lot of their influence and love. Funny that I thought of my eldest sister, even then, as exclusively a book/language person – I really didn't notice how visually oriented she was, partly because I was kind of visually clueless, partly because my younger sister was always identified as the [visual] artist. Especially significant because when my eldest sister finally published a book, it was about color and light....)
Then such a burst of energy, of experience, in the journals from 1993-4, when I spent a year on scholarship in Europe – such great material, in such chaotic form – seeing my expectations transformed, my perceptions so expanded.
There is the year living in Australia with John, 2001-2. In that journal, the tone is strangely simplistic, obsessive, unhappy – repetitive – I really felt trapped by my circumstances in that year, the year I lost the Sydney job and so much money and (what seemed at the time like) all my hopes and dreams. I wish I'd been clearer in that journal about how wonderful John was, and what there was to love about our domestic life in that time – the pages yammer on and on, egotistical and miserable and angry and depressed. I hope he never looked in that journal – there's nothing but complaining, even about him.
What is really bizarre, and definitely unexpected, in all the journals, is the immense change in tone from 2002 on, from my arrival here in northern England. The writing suddenly grows up, becomes interesting (to me now, at least); the style, the attention span, the subtlety, all suddenly increase – a lot. The content is not so different from previous journals – dreams, boredom, frustration – loneliness (it is disturbing, by the way, how much acute loneliness shows up in the 1970s journals – pathological, really). But in 2002 the general level of awareness goes way, way up, and my own interest in what I have to say increases so much – the contrast is weirdly striking, the change in depth enormous.
Reasons for that change? More experience writing journals (it is soon after I started writing regularly, no matter whether I had something to say or not – a strategy learned from writer's books, which I'd started several months earlier in Adelaide). Then there's the whole shock of the Aussie debacle, which closed so many doors, it seemed permanently, but also kicked me into myself, into my own now more solitary but also less fragmented inner space, in a way that was clearly salutary.
Maybe another reason was running out of testosterone and human growth hormone injections (given to me by my LA doctor, who thought it would cheer me up, which it did). There is a slightly hardened, heartless tone to some of the Adelaide journal, which suggests a change in body chemistry – although I would now want the strength, the sexuality, and certainly the weight loss that the testosterone and growth hormone brought me, I'll admit I don't know if I liked myself so much when I was undergoing that particular swerve in body/recreational chemistry. (The other day I saw the handsome Jason Statham in Crank, which I thought was a wonderful movie, in a perverse, demented, funny, testosterone-poisoned kind of way – whatever the New York Times thought of it, it was a great comment on male chemistry.)
Maybe, ultimately, this life I have now – four years of it – although I rebel, revile it, find it dull and limiting and exasperating – is very good for me. Being alone so much, having so much time and space for reflection – in this pleasant home, perhaps the best I've ever had; its competitors in San Francisco and Los Angeles were actually much more limiting, because too small – and even my tendency to waste too much time and attention on passive TV watching and Internet surfing is giving me space to reflect, in a way.
Or of course, maybe I just, finally, partly at least, managed to grow up....
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