before we blogged

There was a time in my life when I kept a journal, processed the world in words, found comfort in picking up a pen and letting thoughts take shape on the page. I did this for a long time--I have a clear memory of an entry written in my Vaudeville Duo diary after a plane ride across the Pacific, probably around age 7, which included the line: "The scary man smoked." I also remember that said scary man also drank brandy all the way from Tokyo to Seattle. But I digress.

I wrote my way through college, for myself and for class. One women's studies paper I had worked particularly hard on came back with an A and the comment "feisty and eloquent" which I embraced as a goal for my writing and my self.

After Princeton I started writing monthly email updates of adventures in Kathmandu, and then clinical stories from New Haven, interspersed with missives from Nicaragua, Pakistan, Haiti, Afghanistan. And I continued writing for myself, keeping record of the sweetness and small sorrows that make up a life.


I found my most recent journal, the last entry dated August 28, 2009. And then there are blank pages until vocabulary from my Dari lessons encroach from the back of the notebook.