Keel's Simple Diary

These days, to receive a gift in the mail, with a hand written note, is something particularly special. 

Last week I was lucky enough to be sent a copy of 'Keel's Simple Diary' in the mail from a good friend. It's a small red book - a diary for you to write how you have spent your days. It helps you out with questions and it is also pretty abstract. (My dear, literal boyfriend, flicked through it and asked if it was French. I can understand why - it probes your inner abstract and hence reads like something foreign, as though translated from another language.)

Diary writing is equally in parts an indulgent, embarrassing, therapeutic, inspiring and solitary practice. We can now tweet our inner most thoughts or put them on our Facebook status. So what do we keep for ourselves? Where do we document our most personal secrets? Despite being an open person, I cherish my conversations with myself. I think that part of my identity is made up by the things not shared with anyone else. That, if nothing else is what makes me feel unique.

I like sitting on a train writing things with verve into a book. I like watching people do this. I wonder what they are writing and it reminds me that every person has their own story that deserves writing down. 

The literal boyfriend told me of a funky looking Japanese man he saw on a train. The man was writing furiously in a sketch book - page after page after page of text. The boyf was curious - was he drawing a 'Manga' comic? Was he writing a new nanotechnology formula? He had to see so he positioned himself so he could casually see the content. Then man was writing, page after page, 'I love Jane, I love Jane, I love Jane'. Beautiful. I hope Jane loves him right up to the moon and back.

  

Comments

[Katie]

Gorgeous and true. I write in a journal daily and I also keep a blog - and it's interesting to see what I write in both places.

[Marianne]

What a beautiful post! I especially love this sentence: "I think that part of my identity is made up by the things not shared with anyone else." Not least because I had never articulated that thought to myself, but reading your words helped me see it is also true for me.