when the internet fails, there's always my journal

My internet connection kept failing this morning. So when I came across a good quote in Payback by Atwood, I found myself pulling out my old journal to jot it down.

This helps me understand my own blogging habits. I have kept journals on and off for literally forty years. As my brother pointed out to me recently writing is part of a process of thinking and reasoning. It has certainly been that for me.

Blogging has constrained me a bit to be more appropriate since it is technically a public forum. I get about 40-50 hits a day (according to counter) which is low for web sites. But there is still the possibility that anyone with an internet connection could read what I write. My constraint is borne out of consideration for others. Privately I write with little constraint.

But I still find this helpful. A release, if you will.

Anyway this morning’s quote from Atwood:

“In narratives involving irrational and obsessive hatred, especially of some person or group, such hatred—say the Jungians–is the mark of a person who has not come to terms with his or own Shadow.”

Margaret Atwood, Payback

It’s tempting to use this kind of thinking when trying to understand others’ hatred and confusion. Better, I think, to look in the mirror.

While I was jotting in my journal I came across a poem I wrote last year: “Apologies to my 2nd Grade Teacher.” I decided to polish it up a bit and post it.

I keep making up music and poetry.

I often think of a friend who in my youth read my poetry and ruefully shook his head and said with a rueful smile, someday it’s got to get better.

Maybe not, but I still like making up stuff.

That’s my attraction to the dance class. It’s a place where I can sit and make up music.

The music went well yesterday. I noticed earlier in the week that I had made a note to myself last year in the margins of the music for the prelude: “Fell apart. Practice more next time.”

I don’t remember how it had “fell apart.” My suspicion was that in attempting to replicate the piece on my tiny organ I had over planned the extra-musical stuff like stops and crescendos and diminuendos. Whatever it was, yesterday I played it pretty accurately. Until I arrived at the last statement of the melody in the right hand and accidentally had the wrong stop. I smiled to myself and finished the phrase without changing the stop. Still. I played it and the postlude well.