Bliss

Rapture without end.

Alma Mahler-Werfel
January 4, 1902
Diary entry

a. An artist’s daughter named Alma pursued music.
b. On her January 3, 1902 journal entry, she wrote “Bliss and rapture.”
c. She began writing her journal when her affair with a certain Gustav gave her trouble, threw her into fits of pain.
d. She closed her diary before marriage with another Gustav, the one Mahler.
e. She sought Freud.

I received an account of her life and recast them into these points, sentences according to my chosen cadence and construction. Which of the five was more important? Which was the indispensable fact? Which was the one sentence that, upon deletion, would destroy Alma Mahler-Werfel? Was it possible that I have already erased her by condensing her into a measure of words. But that possibility would only follow contemplation on What I Do Not Have. Because, truth be told, that line of query would lead me to the undeniable fact that What I Do Not Have Is Alma Mahler-Werfel. If I go that route, then it must be fair to state that I only flattened her into a pad of sentences where not one word carried her tune. Rather than that, I valued What I Have, and so found it fine to believe that I extended Ms or Mrs Rapture five sentences farther than the case files of Freud, the letters of Gustav, her sheets of notations, and the wishes of her father the artist. But, again, a spin on the genetic question: given enough time and life to create an offshoot sentence from one of the five, which sentence ought I take as mother? Make a sixth from the first, second, or fifth? I chose. (Would a reader be so kind and choose the most important sentence about a woman’s life?)

Pochero

Went out and got the papers. The usual load of rubbish, apart from an interesting piece by Philip Toynbee on the boring pointlessness of the writing of Beckett and Burroughs. He should have cast his net wider, to include Osborne. He made the point that this kind of writing treats of despair despairingly. He rightly says that this is a fundamental misconception of Art.

Jimmy Boyle
January 2, 1966
Diary entry

1. Surprised that the lagging Hum160 might catch up with the other class by virtue of its poetry. Still, I discovered some irresponsible students who thought that anything they write would fly. Thought wrong.
2. I expect my back to complain come lunch. I’m bent on finishing the first encoded draft of a thirty page monster. Damn you, brother, the back would say, damn you letting me carry the burden of your inchoate thoughts. The second draft would be written merely to appease my back.
3. A someone tried to ask me about her previous someone. Told her that I have not heard from her ex-someone. Told her that I never want to hear from her ex-someone. I realized too late that I said an unpleasant thing. I preempted any further questions from her about her ex-someone. This could mean that she would never have reason to talk to me. Sad thing on many levels.
4. When I’m through with storytelling and checking duties, I’ll begin wearing my excitement to return to Los Banos. Not a moment too soon either.
5. Never a better pochero than my father’s.
6. I resolved to keep quiet rather than lie.
7. I’m going to miss one helluva party.

Resolution

New Year’s Day
These are my New Year resolutions
1. I will revise for my ‘O’ levels at least two hours a night.
2. I will stop using my mother’s Buff-Puff to clean the bath.
3. I will buy a suede brush for my coat.
4. I will stop thinking erotic thoughts during school hours.
5. I will oil my bike once a week.
6. I will try to like Bert Baxter again.
7. I will pay my library fines (88 pence) and rejoin the library.
8. I will get my mother and father together again.
9. I will cancel the Beano.

Adrian Mole
Diary entry
January 1, 1983

Ah yes, the former method. I place another diary entry, decidedly foreign in place and time, as preface for my own blog entry. A tangential reference? An indulgence? A device of concealment? Whatever it is, it seems to me like I abstained from this tool for years. It feels like I was away for a long while – studies, skirmishes, whatnot, that haughty business of life – then I return home, dazed, feeling old, wiser and wiser by the day. Until months later when come the inexhaustible, unexhausted wisdom: I am not any wiser. I know it. The I-know-it-in-the-gut type of know-it. Still, I rummage through my room, make a pretense of clean-up, and ignore books already read, expanded lists of disciplines, the more recent weapons. These things don’t tell me anything new. They sing to me, every day in every way it’s getting better and better, which, like all of the greater truths, will eventually unfold into a lovely lie. More and more gets known, I hear, in lullaby rhythms. But it’s new year, it’s morning. Instinctively, I reach above the closet. I find the dusty shoebox. An old toy, a grand comfort, a fathering joy. I play – not as I used to, but as I would – and wholly I recall an allergy to dust.