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Diary Cows

by Ronald Koertge

Got up early, waited for the farmer

He hooked us all to the machines as

usual. Typical trip to the pasture,

typical day grazing and ruminating.

About 5:00 back to the machines. 

What relief! 

 Listened to the radio

during dinner. Lights out at 7:00.

More tomorrow.

(many many thanks and deep bows to Ron Koertge for letting me use this.)

               Everyone has a private voice that comments on events.  It often is extraordinary to just listen to this private voice since it rarely is the stuff of fiction.  But it often--and understandably-- gets written in a journal.  Indeed, "journaling" has become a verb.. It sounds like "wayfaring."  And reminds me of `the word "journeyman," which I've always liked in spite of the fact that it was invented before our culture asked for "journerywoman" and "journeyperson."

    "Wayfaring" and "journeyman" and "journaling" sound free--like breaking loose, dropping unwanted posessions.  Yet "journaling" often leads to the opposite.  Yes--it is a place to take the private voice. A place to unburden, take leaps of fantasy, talk from the heart, say things we wouldn't say out loud.  But it's also a place to reify the stories of our lives that we tell ourselves every day, and a place where many writers who "journal" in hopes of finding material get stuck.

       Recently, I looked back over some of my journals from high school.  Reading old writing is always a rather bizarre, out-of-the body experience, like floating on the ceiling and looking at a life that's both yours and someone else's.  I'd been writing for a while  when I re-read this journal. And when I re-read it, I realized that talking privately, from the heart, isn't always the same as stepping into the unknown.

            I was using the journal, as many of us do:  as a place to write about events and talking about my feelings:  M & D (short for Mom and Dad) fighting again. Feel weird at the dinner table. Jim (current boyfriend) wants me to do it  and I can’t decide.  Did well in Trig.  Went to this carnival down the road and wished I could run away in a caravan. Sister is obsessive-compulsive about her room and mine is a mess. Couldn’t sleep. Came out late at night and snuck food. M & D snoring.

             The carnival was actually interesting--a concrete event. I remembered it and later--without thinking about it--used it in a book.  But I was using much of the journal to make myself feel less lonely, just the way I’d talk to a good friend. I was also using it as a place to think and record random thoughts and abstract musings. When there was a concrete, singular event (like the carnival), I felt a jolt of interest when I re-read and I remembered the specific time. For the  most part, though, I couldn't tell one day from the other.

          Like many people, I'd used my journal as a way to release energy--as a kind of safety valve, instead of an alchemical pressure cooker.  I'd used the language of every day, discursive speech and said things I wouldn't say to other people.  But it was a recording of the mind's chatter and familiar narratives rather than an interesting translation--and certainly not transformation that created surprise on the page. Everything I said was true to the way I believed I was and everything I said was from the heart. But I wasn't pushing myself into the terrain of the unknown.  I wasn't risking a voice that didn't know what was going to come next.

            This voice--I'll call it my journal voice--was fairly self-referential, and didn’t concern itself with communicating to a stranger. I assumed (correctly) that the writer would know what I was talking about.  Sometimes I wrote in a kind of code, and this brought up memories: For instance, there was a time when my best friend told me she was pregnant.  She was sixteen, confused, and crying. When I read the entry I remembered everything about the conversation.  But scenes and details were in my memory, not on the page, and the memories they catalyzed weren’t on the page either.   A stranger wouldn’t necessarily feel anything, but only see something veiled, clearly of importance to me, but not to them.  In order to feel something of importance, something that moves them, a stranger needs concrete images and details and surprises that have universal resonance.

Making the Journal Dangerous--Or Turning the Journal into a  Writer's Log

           Over time, I discovered that the kind of reiteration I did in a journal wasn't useful and sometimes harmful to my work as a writer.  If I lived with silence when I heard my inner stories and didn't rush to translate them to the page, a kind of pressure cooker built up and informed fiction and imagination.  When I discarded this familiar way of writing, I discovered I began to allow the journal to be dangerous; I could use it--when I did use it-- to discover what I didn't yet know about my life rather than record what  I already did know. Sometimes this material was veiled in a language that was unrefined and risky.   I could experiment freely, without worry about an audience.  I could scavenge my life in any way I wanted to, and develop audacity.  I could also be a wayfarer in the realm of the imagination--that boundless field that has elements of one's life experience but stretches far beyond it.

            In addition to all kinds of risks, I discovered an exercise that was a simple alternative to the usual journal:  At some point in my day, I took some time to be alone and remember what happened. This exploded my ongoing, remembered narrative and yielded concrete images.

        For example: Today I happen to be at a Zen retreat (it's one way I have of cavorting with silence) and so far my going story about my day is that I heard the bell at 4:30, got up very sleepy, sat with and without thoughts, and had breakfast.  But if, four-and-a-half hours later, I just let my mind drift, what I immediately remember is falling and skinning my knee. I can see the moist stones in front of me, fringed with moss. I can hear my voice saying, Damn!

         I'd been walking with purpose, sick of people (when they did talk) exalting the beauty of the redwoods and thinking "I bet when we're gone the redwoods are going to be relieved to be free of all the burdens for enlightenment we place on them."  As I'd been rushing, I'd been thinking of a phrase from some ancient patriarch that goes: "Make haste slowly." Then I fell on wet stones, fringed with moss.

        This falling was much more specific and vivid than any running anecdote about my day.  The first is any old day in this part of my life.  The second is particular.  If I let myself drift more, I can remember someone smiling at me and the way she pulled her fringed black shawl around her. And green scallions floating in a soup tureen at breakfast.  Particulars lead to particulars. Particulars are the stuff of fiction. 

          It's easy to engage in this kind of reverie. You may remember excited voices at a street fair, the red flash of a colleague's coat, your teenager's sulky goodbye as he leaves for school. And you may forget things that you imagined were important, like rushing to finish a report, or meeting a friend for lunch.  What you do remember may not be something that you think is relevant to your life.  But it will often have emotional significance and suggest other events or images, even scenes.    

              Both the general narrative and the specific event of falling are reports of the same day.  Both are accurate.  But the first version is schematic, and the second takes me right back into part of my day and leaves me somewhat surprised. (And surprise, too, is the stuff of fiction.)  Later, if I were to re-read the first version and the second, the spontaneous images would lead me to remember today, while the "official report" of my day wouldn't register as one day  as opposed to any other at a Zen sesshin (the Japanese word for "long sitting.")  I feel the difference when I  write about specific events because they have emotional and visceral significance. And when I write about events merely because I'm recording what happened I don't feel much of a kinesthetic, emotive, or imaginative charge.   None of these images are particularly profound--in fact, most are rather trivial. But they all involve direct experience and concrete imagery (the nouns that allow a reader to smell, touch, feel, taste and hear). They also lead to parts of myself I may not want to or bother to remember (impatience that leads to carelessness, more interest in the appearance of food than I'm aware of).   This sort of awareness can key me into a deeper resonance below seemingly trivial images.   It can also lead to me a keener awareness of myself in general--an awareness that keeps me honest and helps me key into material.  And it can help me to go deep underground and confer with those demons in charge of releasing characters from whereever they happen to live into the world of fiction. 

       Over time, if I record these concrete images and events, I'll have a personal lexicon of what grabs my attention. The images and events in themselves may not lead to stories. I may never use them.  But they pull me deeper into the great scavenger heap that all artists use--all the stuff of experience.  This depth leads to risk, to surprise, and to knowing how to use oneself in art. 

              If you begin to keep this kind of log, it's good to re-read it occasionally.  Sometimes one or two elements excite you, trigger short paragraphs, a new freewrite, even a story.  You also begin to learn what matters to you--what kinds of people you notice, what conversations your remember, what events have visceral significance.  Again, this helps sharpen your writer’s ear and your writers eye. If you keep this  log for a while, some detail from it may surface when you're writing a story--right when you need it.  You may also find yourself transforming those daily lists of events into zany personal commentaries, as Ronald Koertge did in Diary Cows.  The mundane is no longer mundane.

              There are times when many writers want to abandon experimentation and return to the sheer comfort of the journal as a place to confide, just the way you'd confide to a friend.   After you've used the journal as a place to stretch your voice, this highly personal journal may also deepen. It's light enough to carry--far lighter than the journal of what you already know. It's easy to carry as a wayfarer.