(Reading early Journals 1959 – 1967 \u00a0\u00a0 Written in March 2008)
\nI started reading the Mimi Diary last night \u2014 got through all the early writings to Collision with California.\u00a0 O my.\u00a0 What a romantic teenager living in an impossible fantasy realm of heights and depths and deserts.\u00a0 There\u2019s hardly any contact with the real world.\u00a0 The writing is so emotional, poetic and allusive.\u00a0 It\u2019s very hard to tell what\u2019s really happening.\u00a0 Emotions are overblown, but beautifully expressed.\u00a0 Then there\u2019s a lot of intellectualizing, somebody writing about ideas who simply doesn\u2019t have enough life experience to fully understand what she\u2019s writing about.\u00a0 I can see the legacy of alcoholic parents, trauma, and neglect.\u00a0 There\u2019s a quality that reminds me of mother \u2014 hard to find words: oversimplified, clich\u00e9d, sentimental \u2014 example: \u201cFor God is high above this earth and beast is only clay\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s interesting to note the importance of the quote from Marx: \u201cMan must prove the truth, the reality and power, of his thinking in practice.\u201d That quote was my compass in the fog.
\nOne tremendous thing is I\u2019m able to read all this old writing (Mimi Diary) without judgement.\u00a0 I used to writhe with embarrassment, or get sparked into anger or justification.\u00a0 Now I just feel sad, huge sadness for that poor lost child.\u00a0 She obviously has great gifts, of intelligence, passion, creativity, eloquence, and she isn\u2019t really able to use them at all, she\u2019s floundering in a swamp, unable to focus or channel herself in any effective direction.\u00a0 What a waste!
\nIt does remind me of that journal of Mother\u2019s I read: full of idealistic sentiments.\u00a0 Yes, that\u2019s the word: idealistic.\u00a0 Idealistic and romantic and sentimental.<\/p>\n
Still reading from my California days.\u00a0 It\u2019s fascinating and painful.\u00a0 In the middle of semi-hysterical poetic outpourings will be a well articulated mini-essay on parents and children, or relationships.\u00a0 I have no quarrel with any of the ideas I wrote, they still seem correct to me.\u00a0 The hard part was putting them into practice.\u00a0 And always the undertow of self-hate that continually sabotaged my efforts.<\/p>\n
Read through the \u201cYear of the Ship\u201d which got me from Fred to Davis.\u00a0 My hysterical descriptions of panic, etc sound like PTSD.\u00a0 From infancy because no flashbacks to any recognizable context.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(Reading early Journals 1959 – 1967 \u00a0\u00a0 Written in March 2008) I started reading the Mimi Diary last night \u2014 got through all the early writings to Collision with California.\u00a0 O my.\u00a0 What a romantic teenager living in an impossible … Continue reading