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Re: I hope someday you'll join us...

On Mon, 22 Jul 2002, J. Marie Hall wrote:

> first thoughts beyond the basics...this is fun.
>
> i think i was around 7 or 8.  i was in the guest bathroom at my
> grandparents', looking around as we got our stuff in.  it was sort of
> surreal with my grandma's interesting hand-crafted and/or plastic
> decor :), and i thought, "what if i'm not really alive?  what if i'm
> just someone's dream.  what if i just stop being?"  i think mark twain
> would have found a kindred were we in the same time and space.

I remember very vividly being only 5-8 years old and standing in the
bathroom and staring at the mirror and thinking, "Is that *me*!?"  I'm not
sure whether it was because I didn't look at all like I imagined myself,
or if it was because I had difficulty reconciling my own concrete reality
with my more fluid imaginary reality; I could really feel the difference
between my objective reality, the "stuff" that made up my body, and my
subjective reality; my mind felt almost imprisoned in this body.

> peter, your journal was a lot more insightful than mine.  mine was
> purple with a rainbow on the front...a cloth material.  in it, using a
> brown colored pencil and _terrible_ handwriting, i remarked on my love
> for my dogs and any animal i found, macarroni and cheese and the daily
> minutia of seeing my friends and playing.  i thought a lot...but i don't
> think it was about much :)

Oh, I was plucking all those other thoughts from memory -- and I freely
admit that memory is always in a state of flux and is influenced by later
experiences.  My journal itself is pretty boring.  (One selection, picked
at random:  June 5, 1977:  "Marek went to a camp. A Polish waiter
remembered my name. By Zorro."  I had a thing for Zorro back then.)

> later there were the years of awful, sappy poetry.  followed by teen
> angst.  i threw all that stuff out one day, just disgusted by it.  
> i'm sorry that i did.  i think i was dumb enough to toss around 10
> journals (when i was 19 or 20).

Yikes.  I've always been a record-keeper of sorts.  I was 18 when I
started keeping track of all the movies I saw and all the videos I bought
or rented, the days I saw/bought/rented them, and who I saw them with
(just the movies; there was no point in keeping track of who I saw videos
with, because people have a tendency to walk in and out of rooms).  I
can't imagine throwing any of that out -- nor any of my e-mails.  :)

--- Peter T. Chattaway --------------------------- peter at chattaway_com ---
 "I detected one misprint, but to torture you I will not tell you where."
      Winston Churchill to T.E. Lawrence, re Seven Pillars of Wisdom

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