Skinny Dipping

[24.xi.24.a : dimanche] Hoorah! V.W. has finished writing Mrs Dalloway (on or about the 10th of October). But she was delayed in recording this fact in her diary … I too have been delayed, but by less momentous distractions than V.W.’s. No matter! these delays … what do they matter? still I have the feeling that I’ve lost the thread … so much has happened as everyday life goes trippingly by. Thoughts, thoughts … about what I have finished …

From time to time, I’ve considered expanding this diary rooted in the reading of V.W.’s diary to include other diaries, the diary of André Gide, Kafka’s diaries, Kerouac’s. Just two nights ago, I sat down in front of the fire to begin reading the diaries of Henry David Thoreau. After flipping through the volume and reading a few entries, I looked at Damion Searls’ introduction (I’m beginning to think that Damion Searls is an extraordinary man) and formed the idea that Thoreau must have viewed his diary as his primary literary practice: from his diary everything else flowed. The diary was the working document from which he drew his more well-known works. Kafka’s diaries too have that quality of being a literary workshop, an alchemical crucible in which he brews his magical texts. This is what V.W. writes in parentheses at the end of her diary entry dated Friday 17 October 1924: “(It strikes me that in this book I practice writing; do my scales; yes & work at certain effects. I daresay I practiced Jacob here,—& Mrs D. & shall invent  my next book here; for here I write merely in the spirit—great fun it is too, & old V. of 1940 will see something in it too. She will be a woman who can see, old V.: everything—more than I can think. But I’m tired now.)”

There was a time when I thought my own diary would be my great lifework. The notion of writing a diary enchanted me when I was a child. I must have been eight or nine years old. Maybe I was reading one of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books where she mentions writing in her diary and I thought, yes! I too will write a diary like little Laura. But even though I played at writing diaries off & on, my first true diary was written between January and May 1989. I was twenty years old. I was embarking on my imagined career as a writer and so all I wrote about in my diary was how much I wanted to write. The result was not a very interesting diary. Still I persisted writing dull diary entry after dull diary entry. But mostly I wrote these past diaries without ever looking back. Maybe in 2040 there will be an old W. who will see something in the diaries I’ve written.

I started writing a new diary last July. The title of the diary is The Film Diaries 2. As the title might suggest, my plan was to record my thoughts about the films I watch, not reviews or criticism, but doing what I do here in Skinny Dipping with V.W.’s diaries, use the source material as a jumping off point for digressions, to chase an idea to see where it will lead me. A theme that emerged from writing The Film Diaries 2 was that of reading: what are we doing when we read? When we say we have read a text, what claim are we making? Is it possible to read with talent (yes!) and what would reading with talent entail? My notion of reading has expanded beyond just the textual dimension to include images, moving images, and even that great spectacle that we call reality : the Reality Show. Last Wednesday evening, I watched a documentary film called Common Ground. The film was about soil and how the soil could mitigate the climatological effects of CO2 emissions if we (as a species) changed our ways. If we would only stop spraying pesticides, stop applying fertilizer, stop tilling the soil and let it recover, allow nature and life to perform their magical transformations, living soil would then be able to soak up all our annual carbon emissions. That’s what the documentary said. Incredible! I thought. Let’s get to work! I decided to start practicing regenerative agriculture in my own yard. Obviously, this shiny new activity would have to be documented. I would start writing a new regenerative diary in the spirit of Henry David Thoreau that would be a workbook (working book) of ecological observation and poetry … yes, poetry.

I’ve been reading (for many years) from Jack Kerouac’s Some of the Dharma. It’s a kind of spiritual diary recording Kerouac’s study of Buddhism. For me, that text is a guide for meditation. Kerouac knew as he was writing Some of the Dharma that he was pioneering a new form of literature, a hybrid genre that combined philosophical reflection, prayers, poems, notes, letters, fragments from works-in-progress, and diary entries. Some of the Dharma might be considered an example of total writing. This morning, as I was meditating in the pages of Some of the Dharma, I thought that my soil regeneration diary (while written in the spirit of Henry David Thoreau) should take the form of Kerouac’s total writing. That’s as far as I got. Then I remembered that I was neglecting this diary, Skinny Dipping. So many different spaces to squirrel away my literature! What if I just wrote one book and that book took the form of a total writing diary? Then every day all I would need to do is sit down, open this notebook and resume where I left off the day before. Everything else I write would be fruit that springs from this ever-growing vine. But the soil! If my vine is to grow, I must tend to the soil! The soil must be regenerated.