The great work continues

The great work continues. The great excavation. My own hegira of transformation from a very fucked up little girl to the woman I am today. My grandmother gave me the Five Year Diary in 1968. It was already old; the calendar begins in 1950. The text reads:

The mind is a wonderful machine. It need but be just refreshed and incidents can again be revived in their former clarity. A line each day whether it be of the weather or of more important substances, will in time to come bring back those vague memories worth remembering to almost actual reality.

Indeed.

It begins on March 19, 1968. I introduce myself: "I'm eleven years old, born 1956, July 7. My mother was married for five years and divorced my father. He then entered the army, under my second father, she had two children. I only see my real father once every two years. He always comes back on Easter."

Note that my father is resurrected, in my life, so to speak, on Easter. Very poetic. And thus begins my life in letters. The second diary begins on November 2, 1970, and the third, given to me by my sister, begins May 5, 1973, the day after my prom. From that point on, I've always kept a diary, a journal, and now a blog. I like the continuity. I like being able to trace the course of my life.

I'm not sure why, now, I feel compelled to unearth of all this. Part of it again is practical. I've kept the notebooks, the journals and the completed manuscripts but have jettisoned everything else. My infamous collection of archives is now a streamlined, lean, mean thinking machine. I may be moving, I may not be moving. But in any event, I feel much of the depression lifting as I sort through, read, label and consolidate my existence. My voice.

Nothing can keep me quiet now.