Dear Diary

I’ve been skimming Kafka’s voluminous diary entries the last couple of days. It’s reassuring to find out that famous writers are as boring as everyone else as they relate the mundane events that fill their own lives. I’ve never kept a diary before, and by diary I mean a logbook of a diarist’s emotional and physical life, as written down and perceived by the diarist. I did keep a travel journal during college, which I used mostly to remember the places I’d been and quotes that seem to burst fourth while one’s abroad. But I don’t think my travel journals come close to the intimate minutia your average diarist trudges through as they try to make some sense of their life. Blogs can be like diary entries (a freaky public diary entry), but my blog really isn’t about me, per se, as it is about my perceptions of the world around me, as whacked out as they may be sometimes.

So, you may ask, what would a Blogagaard diary entry look like?

November 34th, 2005

Woke up again. Still live in St. Paul basement studio apartment, thank god, and not Maple Grove. Took shower after waiting five painful minutes for water to warm up. Put on necktie of oppression, went to work at feeble local eye clinic. Spent day reassuring nervous white people and boisterous Somalis that everything was okay, that they would indeed get the eye spectacles that were right for them. Almost caught e-mailing or blogging at least six times by boss or co-workers. Drove home in the dark, wearing sunglasses because clear glasses forgotten in apartment. No messages. No mail, except for new issue of New Yorker to add to pile of other unread New Yorkers. Grilled pork chops on George Foreman grill, made sticky rice as side dish. Delicious yet again. Watched TV reruns to reassure myself humanity still existed outside apartment. Worked on novel. Pick a novel, any novel. Played computer football when novel became too overwhelming. Need to draft quicker, hard-hitting OLB for my team’s defense. Thought about reading a New Yorker, watched That 70’s Show instead and drank hot cocoa. Took hot bath in small tub. Returned to novel, invigorated by bath. Wrote until one or two A.M. Turned off lights and lay in bed, listening to music on headphones. Dreamed of a girl whom I’d known once but could not place. She was so happy to see me. We’d be perfect together. Woke up again.

20 comments:

Amethyst Vineyard said...

I call my journals "Tiffany" and "Brittany" because they sound like they could have been written by a fourteen year old girl by one of those names. The entries usually begin with "(Insert name of antagonist) made me so incredibly angry today." They are a cleansing ritual that I use to release my inner fourteen year old.

L said...

I also enjoyed a hot cup of cocoa this evening. No bath, though. I did see a television show about a handful of young New Yorkers (not the magazine) that had Neil Patrick Harris in it. Yes, Doogie Howser all grown up. He played a suit wearing, woman chasing cad. He was a delight. The only reason I kept watching the show. I also opened the garage door
and felt the swirling snow rush in. We are getting 4 to 6 inches tonight. And it will only get to 18 degrees tomorrow.

I once knew someone who kept a diary of the weather. That's it. She wrote down temp, wind, high, low, etc. Year after year.

Something dirty said...

You have a stack of unread New Yorkers? I used to read old New Yorkers I pilfered from a community college library.

Also, inspektor, that show with Doogie? Did you see Winnie from the Wonder Years was on that episode too!? So best!

Kelly Coyle said...

I call my diary "morning pages" which makes them therapy and not narcissism.

Clurg said...

Henry Darger kept very detailed weather journals for years. He knew those bastards were lying and could back it up.

I guess he would write about the weather and bastard weatherpeople and then work on a few pages of the 15,000 that eventually made his novel The Realms of the Unreal.

Oh, I don't keep a journal unless you count blogs.

David Oppegaard said...

Clurg suggests I change my last name to Samsagaard, after the main character in "The Metamorphasis?"

Your thoughts, my noble peeps?

David Oppegaard said...

I don't know, Kelly. "Morning pages"? Maybe you shoudl just call a cow a cow and get it over with.

Voix said...

What thoughts came to you in the bath? Were you thinking, "How does one safely remove belly button lint" or "Where did I put my toenail clippers" or something along the lines of "There is a cosmic unity that I experience when I am in the bath; it's akin to touching all bodies in water at once."
???

If your answer is A or B, I advise you to not journal. If your answer is C, then Hot Shit Bloggie, you gotta do more introspective reflection and share your wisdom with the rest of the world.

Or just stick to bugs and arm wrestling. Or whatever.

Something dirty said...

I like Samsagaard, but it sort of sounds like a stain treatment...
;)

Lucas said...

I miss everything by only blogging during the day! Damn my ancient at-home computer which sucks more than Hoover!

David Oppegaard said...

Sorry, Lucas, I have trouble writing good posts at work. Maybe it is because I'm surrounded by evil! Wa ha ha ha...

Something dirty said...

Samsagaard could also be slacks.

Geoff Herbach said...

I think I dreamed of the same girl. I onced dreamed of a girl asking about you and but I couldn't find you in this crowd. This, of course, could represent my latent desire for you.

David Oppegaard said...

Woah. Holy Captain. Could this dream girl really exist? Will she yell at me a lot about all my unread New Yorkers? My grandmother always gets me a subscription to at least two or three magazines, every year, even when I tell her not to.

SD, there's nothing slack about the good people here at Blogagaard. We are legion.

Something dirty said...

Okey dokey.

Something dirty said...

Also, what other magazines do you get?

The New Yorker is weird. most magazines are full of ads, the New Yorker has that plus pages & pages of listings and reviews that are virtually useless unless you happen to be in Manhattan. But I still like it.

David Oppegaard said...

I read Atlantic Monthly, sometimes NEwsweek if I like the cover. I read on-line stuff, like the Trib and the NEw York Times. I should read more, but I don't.

Something dirty said...

That's a lot, don't read more. Your eyes will melt.

David Oppegaard said...

oh yeah. we just had apatient here at the eye clinic with that problem. We smoked some weed and now he's fine.

David Oppegaard said...

Man, I feel so uninspired right now.

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