In the age of dust motes within the mix of galaxies, planets, civilizations, and those few persons who took starring roles in saving their kind from world ending cataclysms I decided to keep a diary. I named her Crystal (aka Crysti, Kristi, Chris, Christine, etc. after I realized I could dot each ‘i’ with a heart). I wrote about my friends and cat and turtle though what remains vivid is what I didn’t write about. It didn’t take long to run headlong into ‘not writing.’
I was at my most innocent. My motivation most sincere. I meant no one harm. And I didn’t want to say any of the bad out loud — I wanted to write it out loud. I wanted to see what it looked like on paper. I’d stay up late at night, write to the edge of the cliff, my heart pounding so fiercely I’d feel the pulse behind my eyes — and never jump. I’d tuck the diary back with the rest into a tin lock box and hide the key under my mattress.
My image of those diaries are of bloated pages like notebooks that have gotten wet and left to dry. The ink bleeding, the white space between the blurred words and blue lines and margins so very white, so blank, so full. I wanted, needed, couldn’t write about the abuses I was experiencing at home. It would take twenty
years to get to a point where I could. And yet, even those essays were more
‘not writing’ than not.
Even this.
First thought was I admire how raw this is. Then the piece hooked around. The reader realizes (or is reminded) he's reading a diary about a diary, and as immediate as the writing feels it's non-writing about non-writing, at least in the narrator's view. It seems like the recognition of that, though, makes this a lot more valuable than, say, mere documentation of elaborate avoidance.
Maybe that's why you're doing it. I think I said it before but: very cool project.