Because improvement of the self is real, I think, to the extent that one becomes the self that one already is, and always was (and was made to be), but that has disappeared beneath the selves that one has constructed as a means of appearing acceptable or charming or successful, or sufficiently ‘rebellious’ or whatever, to a society that has lost its sense of generosity and authenticity.
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Which is something I’d like this work to do for me too. And which I think is in the realm of the possible, insofar as, by making myself the subject of many of the entries, I oblige myself to either render myself objectively (as far as that is possible), and thus see myself as I am (which itself is an improvement, I think, over not seeing myself as I am), or render myself falsely, or incompletely, and thus stagnate and become ordinary, or even degenerate.
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Although that work, as far as I understand it, is more immediate and raw (and less ponderous or contrived) than my own, and is, as Boyle states at the outset (in the all-caps she uses for emphasis), “A FUNCTIONAL THING THAT WILL HOPEFULLY HELP ME FEEL MORE LIKE IMPROVING MYSELF.”
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Which is maybe an impossibility, I don’t know. Although I do not feel as though what I’m describing is without precedent, or models. Megan Boyle, with LIVEBLOG (to speak only of one very recent example, here in the States), has already done what I suppose I’m trying to do.
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And that seems to me not unusual, but fitting, or, anyway, the way of things. For if I want to make of this diary something exceptional, it needs to be not only interesting and artful, but also, I think, relentless enough that it becomes an extension of my life, without divesting itself of its nature as an artifact.
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In other words, even though I’m fortunate enough, or hardheaded enough, to have been able to minimize my other activities, pastimes, and commitments, I’ve allowed this diary to consume me to such an extent that to speak of my life outside of it, or extraneous to it, is, while not inaccurate, perhaps not the best way to represent the facts of my existence.
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But even for those shows that I can abide, or am willing to watch, I don’t have much of an attention span. My mode of composition, at least with this diary (which is connected to my life in such a direct way that it cannot be easily compartmentalized, or switched off), is that I’m engaged with it whenever I’m not doing something else, and, even when I am doing something else, I’m vaguely aware of it, so that my subconscious is working on it always.
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Most of the time I’d find a sports channel, but sometimes I’d flip through with the remote and would stop if I saw one of the animated shows that I like because now and then they make me laugh, or a home repair show or a cooking show, or a nature one. Everything else I’m terrible about, and won’t give a second glance to.
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Suffice it to say (at least for me) that I was cautious on this trip, and wore a mask over my mouth and nose whenever I entered gas stations and the like, and whenever I encountered people, which didn’t happen as often as one might imagine, as I was alone most of the day, inside my vehicle, driving, and at night was also alone, in a hotel or motel room, watching TV from the bed, or working at my laptop with the TV muted but the picture on, so I could look at it for distraction when I got bored.
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All of which still sounds unsatisfactory to me, in some vague and indefinite way, but that is ok, I am willing to concede that I’m not sure how to write about this subject, and, even if I was sure, that the point I’d be trying to make (assuming I’d be trying to make a point at all) could prevail in the way that I’d hope it would. I am often wrong about things, and I would not pretend that I am anything other than I am, a writer who is fortunate or unfortunate enough to be as stubborn as he is curious.
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Meaning, I guess, that I am a person who is of their own mind, but still I participate in the larger social mind, if that makes sense, and I am not so much of a provocateur or contrarian that I would base my actions on whatever I thought was a rejection of that which is evidentially true (so as to place myself at odds with others out of mere vanity, or spite), but instead would attempt to conform myself to norms whenever those norms are intended to contribute to the health or well-being of the many, so long as those norms do not ask that I deny a principle, or tenet of faith (which as far as I can see they do not); and even then who knows that I would not conform, for I do not regard myself as such a paragon of integrity that I always live in accordance with my convictions, even if I would like to, and should pray for the courage that I do.
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I should say that I’d been vaccinated by then, as I’m writing this during what appears to be the latter stage of the pandemic, though who knows for certain if we are in the latter stage, or the early stage of the latter stage, or an interval between the two, or merely the ‘new normal.’ Which uncertainty makes me feel as though I need to justify my trip, by way of its necessity, but not so much that I’m actually going to try to do that here, for that would mean addressing every argument that might be brought forth, or posited, as reason that I should not have gone, though I wouldn’t have gone if I had thought there was reason that I shouldn’t, and in the end I went because I wanted to go and because I felt no qualms in doing so, and am writing about it this way only because to not do so would feel to me like an omission, insofar as everything that is happening now is happening in the context of the pandemic, and everything pandemic-related seems to me like it wants to be acknowledged, if only for the sake of perspective, or decency, or citizenship, or the like.
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I brought home from a beach that I’d stopped at, during that trip I’d taken south, a few seashells that I selected from the many that were strewn and half-buried in the heavy, wet sand along which I’d walked, a quarter mile or so, from the place where I’d dropped my backpack and things (after I’d parked my vehicle and had made my way on foot across the lot, to an expanse of shore) that I might wander down to the water, and wade into it, and dive beneath the waves, and swim some, before trudging back up onto land and beginning to look for those shells, while meandering in the direction I’d happened to be facing, as I said I’d done; and now those shells, rinsed of the granules that clung to them, and dry to the touch, are sitting on the sill of a window in an apartment a thousand or so miles from where they recently had been, unaware, I imagine, of the newness of their surroundings, and how they once had been in the ocean, and could easily have remained there, or somewhere on the coast, had I not seen them and picked them up, or had I picked up other ones instead of them.
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Or, anyway, when it would tell us to use prudence if we do act.
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Which doesn’t mean that we should ever remain neutral, or yield to moral paralysis, when our conscience would impel us to act, but that we are likely to channel sin into the world when our emotions and thoughts are so loud that we cannot hear our conscience in those instances when it would tell us to not act.
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And so we could do worse, I think, than to incline ourselves toward, or to make ourselves aware of, that mode of non-judgmental witness that characterizes the existence of vicinities and objects, and by which those vicinities and objects persist. And to integrate it, where we can, with our own mode of witness, which tends to be more involved and self-serving.
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Which isn’t to say that our capacity to judge is not a providential capacity, for it is, but only that the diabolic would have us employ it with neither proportion nor mercy.
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Though because such an object speaks to us without words, and without, really, any moral perspective, but only a sort of mute intelligence (onto which we can project our conscience), it has more in common with the longsuffering of saints, and of divinity itself, than do you or I, or the everyday person, insofar as we all, when we are not at our best, tend to judge the world around us (particularly the actions of those we deem to be wanting in some way), and to readily express that judgment.
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In other words, its consistency of character can speak to us of the inconsistency of our own.
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A table is a table, for instance, but is also more than a table, without losing any of its ‘table-ness,’ and without gaining anything more than that, either.