Diaries

For record keeping of my daily 'activities' I would rather use my journal. If people (I'm not sure who they are) would read it at all, they would have to read it after my burial. In a course in my Masteral studies called "creative non-fiction" I submitted a bunch of first person articles chronicling twenty-five days of my activities. That requirement wasn't at all easy because I had to think of other ways to write a diary entry, since my professor, or the course demanded it. Here is one attempt from that collection entitled Essays on My Moments (Our professor wanted us to title the collection). I wrote this after "deconstructing" some of Dickinson's poems.

Journal Entry 8 (January 15, 2000)

Emily Dickinson's life could be mine. Emily was too close, too staring at life to see the reality beyond her own realities. She had unrequited passions, very few friends, not too many interactions, a lonely, comfortable, well-provided home and a lot of time to stare.

In many ways, Emily and I are the same - at least, for a time. For two years I lived alone in Pag-asa Imus Cavite when that subdivision wasn't yet fully developed. My backyard was one-square mile of rice field. All the houses-left and right and front of me-were not occupied yet. There were only a few tricycles lined up at the talipapa. In my two bedroom, thirty square meter home, I had a bed, a gas stove, and pails of water. I woke up at five AM to cath a van to reach the office in time. From the office, I always arrived home late, after ten o'clock PM, after riding a bus, then a jeepney, and finally, a tricycle. When I got home, I was as the "Cat woman" in Batman II saying, "Hello, honey, I'm home," although I didn't have a honey.

I didn't have a television and during the time, my main entertainment was DZAS. Much of my time was spent staring at the mutha grass, the cat, the movement of the rice stalks, the changing color of the clouds, the sunflowers, and the grazing carabao. I talked to my journal, about everything and anything.

No wonder I thought about death often. My poems were about "white tomb like walls about me like a plague." Emily had also pondered on death. This one seems to be the oft quoted favorite:

Because I Could Not Stop For Death by Emily Dickinson.

Because I could not stop for Death—
He kindly stopped for me—
The Carriage held but just Ourselves—
And Immortality.

We slowly drove—He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility—

But I believe in the absolutes. Absolute God- absolute sin- absolute forgiveness- absolute redemption- absolute free will- absolute damnation- absolute evil- and absolute eternal life. I believe that life doesn't stop in this hour's isolation and frustrations. Beyond this reality, there is color, spunk, variety, adventure, and expectancy. In Emily's poem, the persona could not stop for death. As for myself, I coveted it.