25years ago, a lifetime ago. I first began keeping a journal in high school,and have done so ever since, erratically, with long gaps of weeks or monthsfollowed by intensive daily entries. I had trouble pinning down the date I wanted and kept reading. I saw especially the pattern ofseeking, the hunger for a steady ground on which to stand, played out in onefield after another. Within a few days, my reading had become a compulsion.
Writing is always partly the work of memory, a sometimes ruthlesswork.
The seeds of stories appear without warning, often where they areleast expected. One learns to hunt where the hunting is good, to drop thefiner courtesies. Here be dragons. I read on, ducking psychic blows, flinching a little here and there at thesilly self-importance, the endless insecurity, the rigid, rigid ideas andwords. But the girl who wrote these smudged notebooks is dead, long gone.