Journaling on

   The big red book of Cheever’s collected short stories is iconic, and rightly so, but no better for my money than the white volume next to them on my bookshelf – the selected excerpts from his journals.  There is an honest, easy poetry about them, especially when confesses – again and again – his many lusts:  for fame, gin, release from gin, men, release from guilt about men, swimming outdoors, vigorous exercise generally and, above all, his wife. 

   I thumb from time to time, warily, through my own brand of recollection.

   I used to wonder if television, video games, and the rest of busy, modern living would hunt the journal, like the personal letter, to extinction. 

   I ventured my opinion, which was no – not as long as we need a place to say, “This is what happened to me.  This is what matters.  This is what I would say to you, if only I could.” 

   That was before the Internet, which proved me right.  People just don’t call it a journal anymore, but a blog or a post or a tweet.  The instruments change, but the song – the infinite song of being and meaning – remains the same.