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2003-03-08 - 1:23 a.m.

tension

"...this schism between my memory of my earlier self and the historical facts made me wonder if the journal served another, more covert purpose for its keeper, namely to chart that progression of selves that we are at various stages of our life. We do change as people - even though our fundamental natures may remain the same. Whether we are in love or out of love, rich or poor, happy or sad, healthy or beset by illness will affect the self that we are at any given moment. Ageing and the getting of wisdom contribute to this constant metamorphosis as well but, as we move through time, it's as if we shed these selves in the way a snake will slough off its skin: the glossy new scales bearing no imprint of the weathered, dull integument that was once there. And it seems too that we can be certain our memories will play us false about our past: only the journal remains as witness to the series of individuals we were in our lives."


guardian article about journals

all the seeming contradictions. the pathos.