Why write things down?
On diary keeping
“We should start journaling,” husband said to me, blithely, over a cocktail on the deck. I blinked.
“Do you even KNOW me?” I shot back, aghast. “I’ve been journaling, almost nonstop, for thirty years. I’ve never felt less seen.”
He was referring to his new desire to write things down by hand, a practice which he took up in Vienna at the encouragement of our winsome guru. It makes my heart thrill to see him pick up a pen. Highly erotic. Good for him.
But I was referring to my lifelong compulsive habit of writing things down by hand, of processing with the written (instead of the spoken) word. I have stacks of mortifying diaries, dating back to when I was 7, for every year of my life. I can’t stop this useless habit. And I can’t believe he’s never noticed this useless habit until now.
This newsletter is, of course, an extension of this compulsion. My most common feedback about this waffling Substack comes from a person, with raised eyebrows, saying, “I feel like I am reading your diary.” And you are. Just one of many. (But don’t feel too special, my sweet voyeurs: I keep far more embarrassing records elsewhere, in books filled with lurid secrets I keep from the internet.)
But why this compulsion? Why not verbally process like a normal person?
I don’t know. In my mind, in my quiet self, I perpetually try to find balance between this tension of a need for privacy and a need to publish, a need to remain separate and a need to commune.
Writing things down—preferably in a book, but sometimes in an email—has always felt like my best medium, since I was small.
There is a slowness and deliberateness to writing that has always appealed to me. In contrast with speech, which is fast and electric, I find comfort in the sluggishness of my pen. The opportunity to stop, to revise, to think: These forced pauses, especially when metered by the speed of my hand, help me think better.
I am a slow thinker. I do not have the kind of liquid intelligence that absorbs concepts and generates meaning in an instant. Writing does not make me a faster thinker, but it does patiently hone my ability to sort out thoughts, to find new ideas, to draw conclusions, to pursue big and little truths.
I wasn’t aware of these benefits when I was 7, at least not consciously. My mother encouraged us to keep diaries from a young age, as soon as we could write. In her wisdom, she knew that this would be a beneficial lifelong practice if we stuck with it. (My sister Grace and I did, surrounding ourselves with piles of notebooks and pens throughout our young lives. She still never travels without a notebook at hand.)
I am grateful for this upbringing, and I haven’t set my pen down since. This email is an outflowing of that obsession: the need to set down my brain in words. It is no more profound than that.
Is it still summer?
I love a woman with an arch look. A look that says: I might know something.
Why have I always been so interested in men vs. women? I love the islands of difference, I love what gets lost in translation, I love all this muddle, which makes heterosexuality so interesting and fraught. Trust me, I can’t get enough of it.
It is always a good time to be reminded of the graceful brilliance of Teju Cole. Aforementioned husband recommended a conversation between him and Ben Lerner from 2017. The best part of the podcast was Teju, honey-voiced and perfect, reading from Blind Spot.
The Beauty of the Husband! How significant he is! Making dinner, writing poems, fiddling with a TENS unit, swimming in the ocean in a linen shirt, growing shiitake in the back garden!
Sometimes, you go to church for a good word. Sometimes, you go to church for a small conversation. Sometimes, you go to church to sing with a hundred other voices. Sometimes, you go to church to sit on a bench and sweat and confess. You don’t always know what you go for, but you go.
Boy moms, seeing each other
We’re in the indoor kids’ “museum.” Moses encounters two older boys, and they instantly start fighting.
They haven’t even said hello or exchanged any pleasantries: They immediately launch into chasing and jumping around each other in bellicose, dance-like motions, trying to take things out of each other’s hands, push from behind, trip each other lightly.
The mom and I make eye contact. I look at her and say, “I’m fine with it if you are.” She gives me this cool nod of recognition. “Oh, yeah,” she says, “I have three sons. This is no big deal. This is what they want to do.”
It still mystifies me, growing up in what felt like a predominantly female household, that this is what boys want to do: wrestle, fight, compete. We so often try to tame these impulses, we civilized progressive folk, but it feels fruitless—and more than that, possibly damaging to the ways that boys want to grow up.
There has been much written about this, in tiresome political ways, which I will not rehearse. I merely wanted to note: It feels good to be understood, by another mother of sons, who speaks to me without words: I don’t understand it either. But I have learned to let it happen.
Currently reading
Buddenbrooks, Thomas Mann
The Sea, the Sea, Iris Murdoch
The Covenant of Water, Abraham Verghese
Good one, Abby. (I mean, they're all good!) I sent one paragraph to Allen Levi and Bp Todd Hunter. Both responded positively.