May 17th, Nineteen Ninety-Nine: First Entry
I woke up this morning to the sound of thunder, echoing off of
the window beside the bed.
From the breadth of the sound, I assumed there would be sheets
of rain, pummeling the grasses and sidewalks. The sound of the
thunder woke both B. and I, and I slunk into my jeans and camisole,
through the glass doors to the wooden porch to ingest my morning
take of nicotene and take in what I extpected to be a strong storm.
Though it sounded like a storm, it was the gentlest rain I'd experienced
in some time. The drops fell down so lightly; it was like the
softest kisses one could imagine, fleeting and teasing in their
lightness. Shy rain, I would call it, just a little warm and very
timid. I sunk my bare feet into the puddles on the walk and stood
outside for several minutes, kissed gently again and again by
the tiny droplets, inhaling the scent of morning, and all things
new.
With that feeling, I start yet another journal. I have journals
as far back as 1976, when I had just begun to write; six years
old at the time. They often dissapoint me. I am an impetuous person:
I embrace new projects with all the vigor of war, but often, as
soon as something which seems bigger looms it's voracious head,
I drop the former notion before cobwebs have had time to settle.
I have many times sat and read through the pile of journals, looking
for inklings of myself - as I am now - hidden in the pages written
when I was a child, an adolescent, a blossoming woman. Often,
I find them, and it amazes me how little - on some level - we
truly change from what we were born as.
It is with these things in my mind: the newness of things that
are in truth not new at all, and the compulsion and determination
to begin, always, again and again, knowing there will be some
lapse, but hoping there will not be; knowing it is nearly futile.
Though living may be a continuum, there are always lapses, and
they come and vanish in an instant that can swallow years.
By way of introduction, I warn you now: a journal for me is not
a confessional. I was not raised in that cultural sect which keeps
secrets and then feels the need to purge them somewhere secretly.
Instead, I was raised with the notion that a large part of being
an artist is to bear witness: to record events through individual
eyes for the purpose of marking personal history, and perhaps
bringing the personal to history in a way that is unique and diverse. By virtue of what
I am - an artist who has, since I was a child, been a sensate creature, engrossed with touching, tasting, feeling, and the
union of body and soul - I expect, like any journal I have kept,
this one will be a bit more salacious than another artists memoirs
may be, though I similarly suspect what is sensual, sexual, and
considered an event by myself may be those things considered less
noteworthy by others.
Being kissed by the rain this morning was an event. It may or
may not have been as noteworthy an event as the falling of the
Berlin Wall, the day women gained the right to vote, as a death,
or a birth, or the union of two souls, but from moment to moment
- and in an individual life - those moments spent with our feet
in the puddles, the rain kissing our cheeks, are those I never
wish to forget.
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