Hence, this entry.
You may now thank your lucky cyber stars that DD requires that I type in my entries, otherwise you would have to endure my truly atrocious hand writing.
There are two things about this messy journal that give me pause. One is that I tend to feel guilty when I write sloppy. Because I actually DO some fairly decent calligraphy from time to time and KNOW there is a better, and more aesthetically pleasing way to write. The other is much more disturbing, but also more interesting.
Many years ago, as I have mentioned elsewhere, I worked as a nurse’s aide in a psychiatric ward. There was a patient we had for a while who was convinced that she was the Queen of Norway. (She WAS Norwegian, but I am pretty sure the similarity ended right there)
She used to walk around in her robe and slippers with her head held high, nodding graciously at whomever she met in the halls. She also carried with her a cheap school tablet and a pencil. After she made her “tour”, she would sit down in the day room at a table and write letters and memos and other imaginary correspondence. One day she tore out a sheet that she had written, folded it carefully and handed it to me. She told me that it needed to go out in the next mail, and would I be so kind as to see to it. She said it was VERY important.
I took it to show to the head nurse. We could not make heads or tails of it, as it was written in a jumbled mix of English and Norwegian.
Poor thing.
But here is the part that makes me a little nervous about my scribble book: There are times when I’m scratching out some trial and error writing in these pages that I feel like that lady. There’s a sort of manic quality to my daily writing assignment that does give the whole exercise a certain . . . edge. ( I don’t want to actually SAY psychotic, but I am THINKING it). Some of the sentences are stream of consciousness drivel that sometimes breaks out in rhyme. For instance, here is an excerpt from several weeks ago. . . I hesitate to let you see it, but in the interest of furthering the art of scribble, I will expose my manic self. (Somebody blindfold the Watcher, if he sees this he may have some kind of episode)
Here we go:
Dinner, dinner, what shall we have?
Hey, ho, I don’t know
Spit spat, whaddaya think of that?
Holy cow, what’s for chow?
Ho hum, make me some.
Spaghetti, lasagna,
Chicken or bean sprouts,
Anything’s better than
Bacon or pig snouts.
Give me some broccoli
Spinach and biscuits
And I’ll be as happy
As a chigger with Triscuits.
Oh boy. But there you have it. Raw, goofy, unedited brain detritus.
(A chigger, in case you don’t know, is a sort of “no see ‘em” bug that bites you and then you itch like crazy for a couple of days. Nasty little creatures. )
The bad handwriting just underscores the slightly wild and chaotic feeling of this kind of writing. I try to comfort myself by remembering the reason I do this is from reading “Discovering the Writer Within”. The authors said that this technique was good for loosening the grip of the “Watcher”, the inner critic, and to free up the creative part of the mind. What we want is to have the Watcher cringing in the corner, out of the way for a while. Oh we’ll have to call him back later to help clean up this mess, but at least there will be lots of words to work with. Uncensored words, messy words, incoherent run on sentences that need punctuation and clarification half thought out bits of fragmented thoughts that are needing rearrangement and a major editing job. Like that, see. But the trick is to write, to write furiously if you have to. And worry about how it looks later. This is no small feat I must say. Especially for a hyper organized soul such as myself.
I wonder if our mental patient ever went back later with her inner critic and ended up publishing a best selling novel or something. You never know. Titled something like, “Memoirs of Queen Ellana, The Delusional Days”. Bet she made a bundle too.
So there you have it. My true confessions, straight from the manic scribble notebook of the Queen of Norway.
You now have Our permission to go about your duties for the day.