Sensuous

23 May — Sunday

An odd feeling. Sitting again at this typewriter. Blank paper staring in accusation at me. Fingers remembering this particular keyboard. The rest of me remembering the feeling of pouring my head onto the blank paper, dirtying the paper while cleansing the mind.

Hard habit to break, this. Days, I forget how many, of putting off the moment of confrontation as long as possible, then rolling the paper into the typewriter, then throwing meaningless words onto the page, slapping out the fragment of a single nonsense sentence, then stacking the page meticulously on the pile of pages under the radiator cover.

Feeling, as each page joined the pile, that I was paying some sort of curious dues. And feeling too that I was cheating, breaking the spirit of the rule while hewing to its letter, inventing ceremony for myself as meaningless as any I could devise.

Then a couple days off. And one day when all I typed was the date, and then no more entries. I don’t know how long it’s been since I even made an attempt at an entry. Over a week, though, because I think it was Tuesday when I could no longer bear the silent presence of the typewriter, sitting out here endlessly and gleaming like blood on Lady Macbeth’s hands. Put it in its carrying case, closed it, tucked it case and all in the closet.

Out of sight and almost out of mind.

And now I take it out again for as little reason as I ever put it away. Things I want to get down but how to write them? I would say that I have lost the knack, that this recording process is now unfamiliar to me, but am surprised how quickly I am into it as deeply as I ever was. My fingers fly on these keys, throwing letters and words and sentences at the page without my thinking them over first. I have missed this, and realize now how much I have felt the omission, but if challenged I could still not explain what it is that this does for me, what it is that I require of it.

Feel a compulsion to fill in all the blanks now, bring the nonexistent reader up to date on all that has happened since I stopped putting my life on these pages. Then I did this and then I did that and he said and she said and I went and I saw and I felt and I was and I am.

No.

Wouldn’t know where to start. Have to write it when it’s hot, not seek to recall it after it’s cooled off. No point to that. The pages are for my eyes only, and my own eyes will never play over them. It is not a book to be read but a book — call it that, the word seems to fit — a book to be written, an existential document, each page of which has served its purpose forever by the time it leaves the typewriter.

Could I then throw away each page after each day’s writing? Could I write this diary as Penelope made her shawl, knitting all day, ripping out stitches all night?

I think not. There is a security in the growing stack of papers, and it would hurt as much to destroy them as it would to read them. Neither my eyes nor another’s shall ever read them, and yet this does not mean they do not exist. Bishop Berkeley wondered if a tree falling in the forest could be said to make a sound if no ear was close, enough to hear it. That hearing might define sound, as reading defines writing. But I think not. Though I would be hard put just now to explain myself.

I am always hard put to explain myself. I write this day after day in an attempt to explain myself to myself, and the explanation is foredoomed because I never read what I have written.

And never shall.

I sat down tonight with something specific to write, but it shall remain unwritten until tomorrow.

I wonder why.