Better Hope You Don’t Meet This Journal In A Dark Alley
Twelve years ago this past Tuesday I began writing in the journal which eventually gave birth to this blog. The first line right at the top (I have it in front of me) says “Book of Gratitude.” The date is February 9, 2009. That entry and every one since has been written in longhand, an anomaly in these digital days. Not sure why I chose that. I think I knew that the haptic nature of pen to paper would feel more attached to me and more personal and more from my heart, without the mediation of keyboard and monitor. Hemingway said he wished he could carve his novels in wood and I know what he meant.
I’ve been through a lot of pens and many pounds of notebook paper. I’ve written in different rooms and in different seasons and in different moods and states of mind and I’ve written in the morning. At some point I decided to alternate blue and black ink. One day black, the next blue, then back to black and so on. There’s some serious heft now to all the old pages and there’s some real height when they’re in a pile. It feels substantial, like a body of work.
I’ve never re-read it all, though I’ve looked at certain sections and passages and dates. Since taking the photo above, I have put the entire stack into twenty binders. As my friend observed “the pile has impressive physical stature. I wouldn’t want to run up against it in a dark alley.”
I’ve made notes on the weather and jotted down observations on big events of the time and little happenings in our neighborhood and garden and about why I love the old moldy motheaten balaclava I used on Denali in 1986. I have spilled coffee and dribbled oatmeal and peanut butter on pages. There’s even some blood from mystery cuts. I’ve written about how hard it is to start writing on many days and the tricks I’ve used to begin.
Mostly, though, I sought to look at my days through the eyes of gratitude at dawn, making up the form as I went along. I started off on that first February day just listing whatever I could think of for which I was grateful and then working to keep that spirit alive during the day. It morphed over time, as things do, and now twelve years have elapsed.
I have also learned about just walking and letting the path reveal itself. That’s what writing this blog has been like, the way Antonio Machado expressed it–
Wanderer, your footsteps are the road, and nothing more; wanderer, there is no road, the road is made by walking. By walking one makes the road, and upon glancing behind one sees the path that never will be trod again. Wanderer, there is no road– Only tracks on the ocean foam.
I’ve discovered that practicing gratitude doesn’t always slap you upside the head out of a funk and it doesn’t necessarily help you make a difficult phone call or always come unbidden when you’re enjoying hot water in the shower or when you notice your fridge full of food or see a rainbow.
Sometimes you just feel like puke or you’re sad or pissed off and all you can do is ask “What’s great about this?” and probably not even get an answer, at least right away. But, as Ishmael asks in Moby Dick, “what can habit not accomplish?” That’s the reason for this Inquiry into a Gratitude-Inspired Life as a daily practice.
