Graphomania redux, or Why am I the way I am II
When I say I'm a philosophizing graphomaniac, I ain't kiddn! When I was 7 years old, someone auspiciously gave me a vinyl-bound 96 page lined notebook. Hereon started my life-long battle, or rather, relationship, with graphomania.
Yes, I had a diary. Starting at age 7.
Now I possess a total of 10 filled notebooks, each one put to use to chronicle the daily or weekly or sometimes even monthly events in the life of - well - me. I sat down and started re-reading them last night. They start out as scribbles and doodles, and random "I hate mom" without explanations, as well as a 7 year old's attempts at fiction: there is a full and finished science fiction novel, witha love story in the middle and a cliffhanger at the end setting up a sequel. It's comical. In fact, it's so funny, that an adult could not possibly have written it that way on purpose. My mom still quotes it once in while:
"The team removed their spacesuits, and, giggling and laughing, put on slippers gettomg ready to step into the alien's home" (this was because we went to a museum that day, and they make you wear slippers because the floors are hand carved...)
Then the diaries move on to pre-adolescence with the most darling detailed report of what I can only describe as side effects of awakening hormones. There is a pinching new awareness of boys, and a painful first re-shuffling of friends.
"I said I was sorry, and he told me he'd forgive me if I kissed him! The nerve, can you believe it [secret pleasure just shining through the words]... So, I skipped last period and tried to go home early, but he caught me and asked if I plan to apologize. I almost died inside. I said, better if you kiss me! Then he and his friends got me and my friends with snowballs on the way home!! Those jerks..."
aah... When snowball fights were a token of love and a reason for joy; and having nerve was asking for a kiss - twice!...
In the middle of this coming of age story, wedged, like a doorstop, is the intrusion of immigration viewed through the eyes of a child who saw everything, but didn't quite understand it all. Reading between the lines, though, you gather a lot.
"We had a party today and bought ice cream. CHOCOLATE! It came in a box!!!" This is from a child who's never tried chocolate ice cream, and has certainly never seen ice cream come in box... Or, "I want a Barbie... I want a Barbie, they're so pretty... But they [my parents] won't buy me one!! I hate them" (infer that a Barbie cost about the same as what the HIAS paid us for a week so we could eat...)
Finally, the writings move swiftly into mature, graphic accounts of puberty and advancing
adulthood, complete with tragedies and difficult personal decisions, told with such brutal honesty, and such blatant recognition of my own internal pathology at that time, that I truly wonder how a 16 year old got up the nerve to be quite so honest with herself, when self is the person to whom one most wants to lie!
Unfortunately, circa age 20, the diaries abruptly stop. I lost the drive to write, or found other means of unloading my troubles, or maybe, started talking instead.
However, nobody ever really changes, obviously, so here I am now!
One day. One day, you just watch, I'll make a book and be famous. Maybe I'll call it... 96 pages, lined...
Yes, I had a diary. Starting at age 7.
Now I possess a total of 10 filled notebooks, each one put to use to chronicle the daily or weekly or sometimes even monthly events in the life of - well - me. I sat down and started re-reading them last night. They start out as scribbles and doodles, and random "I hate mom" without explanations, as well as a 7 year old's attempts at fiction: there is a full and finished science fiction novel, witha love story in the middle and a cliffhanger at the end setting up a sequel. It's comical. In fact, it's so funny, that an adult could not possibly have written it that way on purpose. My mom still quotes it once in while:
"The team removed their spacesuits, and, giggling and laughing, put on slippers gettomg ready to step into the alien's home" (this was because we went to a museum that day, and they make you wear slippers because the floors are hand carved...)
Then the diaries move on to pre-adolescence with the most darling detailed report of what I can only describe as side effects of awakening hormones. There is a pinching new awareness of boys, and a painful first re-shuffling of friends.
"I said I was sorry, and he told me he'd forgive me if I kissed him! The nerve, can you believe it [secret pleasure just shining through the words]... So, I skipped last period and tried to go home early, but he caught me and asked if I plan to apologize. I almost died inside. I said, better if you kiss me! Then he and his friends got me and my friends with snowballs on the way home!! Those jerks..."
aah... When snowball fights were a token of love and a reason for joy; and having nerve was asking for a kiss - twice!...
In the middle of this coming of age story, wedged, like a doorstop, is the intrusion of immigration viewed through the eyes of a child who saw everything, but didn't quite understand it all. Reading between the lines, though, you gather a lot.
"We had a party today and bought ice cream. CHOCOLATE! It came in a box!!!" This is from a child who's never tried chocolate ice cream, and has certainly never seen ice cream come in box... Or, "I want a Barbie... I want a Barbie, they're so pretty... But they [my parents] won't buy me one!! I hate them" (infer that a Barbie cost about the same as what the HIAS paid us for a week so we could eat...)
Finally, the writings move swiftly into mature, graphic accounts of puberty and advancing
adulthood, complete with tragedies and difficult personal decisions, told with such brutal honesty, and such blatant recognition of my own internal pathology at that time, that I truly wonder how a 16 year old got up the nerve to be quite so honest with herself, when self is the person to whom one most wants to lie!
Unfortunately, circa age 20, the diaries abruptly stop. I lost the drive to write, or found other means of unloading my troubles, or maybe, started talking instead.
However, nobody ever really changes, obviously, so here I am now!
One day. One day, you just watch, I'll make a book and be famous. Maybe I'll call it... 96 pages, lined...
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