-- Friday, July 9, 1999 --

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11:09 a.m. The scruffy book, opposite, is my old journal #3, started in February 1972 when I'd just turned 25. I'm currently in #29, a more presentable ledger. But there's no telling how old I'm going to be when I'm finished this current one because I've gone more or less electric.

When I was a teacher, I made journal-keeping a mandatory part of any course. If I ruled the world, I'd make it a mandatory part of growing up, getting a license, finding a mate, raising children, growing old. If you can learn to scrawl something down, attach a date, put it away, and then look at it later ... and later ... you will see a miracle. You will see the passage of time and the growth of an individual. You will see yourself in a true mirror. How can you adjust your barrette or trim your mustache if you don't have a mirror? How else can you deal with the fact that you have both? Badda-boom.

Not that the practice of journals and writing came easily to me. Journal #1 is a collection of bits and fragments and letters from before I got married; journal #2 is a steno pad that they handed out at Marriage Encounter. Husbands and wives were shunted to separate rooms to answer a list of intimate questions separately, and by golly, we eventually went our separate ways. Plus, during that period I finally learned how to spell the word "separate": there are two a's in there, separated by an rrrrrr.

Back then I didn't have the courage to actually waste my valuable time writing things down in a stupid book. I wasn't the type. I had things to do. Places to go. People to see. I had stuff to buff. All I actually wanted to do, really, was have a convenient place to make my lists, keep my things-to-do in order, check them off, keep on keeping up.

So I made lists of what was in my wallet in case it got stolen. I had bank credit cards and library cards; pharmacy cards and a watch claim check; cards from Esso, Getty, Arco, Chevron, Phillips, Gulf, and American Oil lest I run out of gas. The back cover of the notebook had all sort of "useful" information; I'll bet you didn't know that 24 sheets make a quire, now did you? Or that 4 liquid gills make a pint? And the cubic measure of stone, a perch, varies in different parts of the country?

Many of the people in my phone-number list are dead now, and every single couple except one has divorced. For all you people born in or near the '70s, hear this: it was a really hard time to be married. You have no idea. Ease up on your parents -- think about the pressures in your own life right now, and then turn off your music and tune up the sitar, pull on some tight Dacron-and-polyester blend striped jeans, and imagine there's no such thing as AIDS -- well, it was con-fu-sing.

I had the beginnings of a Christmas list in August, and my daughter was already getting Wind in the Willows, the Sesame Street Songbook, and a Dr. Seuss drawing book. Isn't that cute? She turned out: exactly.

But I want to go on record and report that I tried really really hard to hold it all together. I'm appalled, frankly, by some of it. Who was this person? She was a registered Republican: 42130-F. Yeah. Trying so hard. On August 14, 1974, she'd checked off:

get more varnish

glue the cork

buy rope

contact paper

buy primer

call Rex Thorn

call Yardley lab

gather stones

return bullhorn

What was she trying to make, or fix, or cover up? And who was Rex Thorn? Wouldn't you remember somebody named Rex Thorn? And what was she doing with a bullhorn? Lordy.

At a certain point later in 1974, and I don't know what caused it (although I have a few clues in the dusty, linty bottom of my mind) I started to run over into the margins. It was my first act of defiance, the beginning of the end of the act. And then, suddenly, I picked up a purple felt-tip -- what was I thinking? -- and began to babble that life was a cosmic jigsaw puzzle.

Oh well. No matter how much rope and glue I bought, that center just wasn't holding.

Tomorrow -- another journal entry.