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Dear Diary – November 9, 2018

November 24, 2023
MThomas

[Context: my mother had just passed away, and I was remembering that both my parents’ choice in reading materials influenced my own fictional likes and dislikes.]

I guess both Mom and Dad liked Trek from its inception [in 1966]. I remembering watching the original series (in syndicated reruns of course) in the late ’70s/ We saw it in the “TV room” in my grandparents’ house….They had a color Zenith; we only had a tiny black and white on a bookcase. I remember being fascinated by the bright reds and blues (this was the point…color TV was new in the late ’60s and the sets and costumes deliberately used bright primary colors)…

Mom had all three “Star Trek Readers” I through III, by James Blish….Later I would borrow more complicated science fiction / fantasy stories from my Dad — Frank Herbert’s Dune and Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land stood out. And of course, Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles, which were televised when we lived in Berne [a small village in New York west of Albany]. Once I discovered [The Chronicles of] Narnia and The Hobbit in 3rd grade, it was all over. I was a nerd for life.

And now look at the influence on pop culture. Movies, books, music, clothes, shoes, bags…the Internet and modern media. Smartphones. Tablets. Skype. Wireless devices. Bluetooth. GPS.

Nerd-dom has conquered the world. And my mom got there first. Way to go, Mom.

Dear Diary – March 16, 2004

November 20, 2023
MThomas

[Context: While chaperoning students on overseas study in Perth, Western Australia, I badly burned my feet and back on a beach.]

It is difficult to walk, but today was slightly better than yesterday. Maybe tomorrow will be slightly better than today, and so on. One can only hope; if only life were like that, there would be an end to suffering.

Dear Diary – May 17, 2001

October 28, 2023
MThomas

There is a difference between being alone and feeling alone; being isolated and feeling isolated; being rejected and feeling rejected. Reality and emotive perception have no relation, except that which the mind projects. Eliminate the projection, and the reality allows itself to become revealed.

Only I can permit this reality to become revealed; only I can perceive, how can another remove this perception from me, if I cannot myself? No one can rely on me, if I do not rely on myself. No one can be helped by me, if I do not help myself.

No one can help me not feel alone, if I cannot do it myself. Being alone is a function of reality and circumstance; feeling alone is a function of myself, not dependent upon external stimuli. This feeling is one I must remove myself. I cannot be two, if I cannot be one.

Dear Diary – August 19, 2004

September 23, 2023
MThomas

[Note to self – it’s probably not a coincidence that so many of my better diary entries were written in August. I obviously have more time to think and write at that time of year!]

What strange turns my life has taken. Never would I have in a million years expected to be here, now, in this apartment, typing on an extended keyboard into a Japanese computer, in a Japanese city, listening to the same Cure tape I was listening to back in 1996. Has it actually been 8 years?

Ten years ago I was playing role playing games and drinking in Robbins lounge, getting ready to pack everything I owned into a moving van to move to Ann Arbor. A city I didn’t know, with no money for deposit or rent, or a job. Without a clue. Totally hopeless. Instead of exploring the city, I stayed in my bedroom and played games or typed. What was I thinking? I can’t even get in touch with the few people I met there. Even the ones I knew at ND are either gone back where they came from or no longer answer my emails.

I can still picture them all in my mind. I can still see the rooms I lived in, all the way back home. Even the freshman dorm room which no longer exists, since they tore the building down. How can that be?

It must be this which makes us human; the ability to take the visual and turn it into mental. The capacity to make emotional connections between the world outside and the world inside. The belief that there are two worlds. This makes us human, and at the same time it makes us separate. It is a false belief, that we are not of the outside. Yet there is no returning. Once we start, we can never stop. Even changing languages doesn’t help. We merely start over again from a new perspective, still outside the outside.

Dear Diary – May 19, 2001

September 15, 2023
MThomas

A story must be more than merely a story. It must be an examination, of the human heart, of the mind, of the spirit. Of experience and existence. A simple recapitulation of one’s personal past or the delusional suffering of a dysfunctional suburban American family have no merit. Overcoming the reality we believe we live in, debunking fiction and elevating the truth, that is worthwhile.

On beauty

September 14, 2023
MThomas

“Ad pulchritudinem tria requirunter:

integritas, consonantia, claritas”

“Three things are needed for beauty: wholeness, harmony, radiance.”
(as translated by “Stephen,” i.e., James Joyce.)

Or more simply integrity, consonance, clarity.

Note that the original is a bit longer, in St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica:

Ad pulchritudinem tria requiruntur: Primo quidem integritas sive perfectio: quae enim diminuta sunt, hoc ipso turpia sunt. Et debita proportio sive consonantia. Et iterum claritas.

Dear Diary – March 10, 1990

September 13, 2023
MThomas

Sometimes I wish I could put my thoughts directly onto paper. I think all the time, about everything…I see pictures in my head, pictures of my past — exact details of what I saw and experienced. Déjà-vu often occurs to me. It’s strange, that feeling of already having been someplace. Sometimes I can tell what’s going to happen in a matter of minutes. I can’t stand things like that — they send chills up my spine.

Dear Diary – May 12, 1999

September 11, 2023
MThomas

Just because you aren’t paranoid doesn’t mean that they aren’t out to get you.

Dear Diary – August 2, 1996

September 8, 2023
MThomas

The lecture about Irish folk songs [note: at the time, I was in the Gaeltacht, west of Galway, learning Irish language] last night, two nights ago, whichever (time has no meaning in this place), was wrong. Why do we write, the léachtóir asked; to communicate; the poet wants to communicate.

No.

That is not why I write. Sometimes I write for fun, to play at words, to play with feelings. Sometimes I try to work out my problems myself in writing (I can’t). Sometimes I write just to relieve tension. Sometimes I write because I have to, because if I don’t get these words out of me and onto paper they’ll rip their way out.

Dear Diary – October 5, 2003

September 5, 2023
MThomas

Today I talked to virtually no one for the first time in quite a while. It’s almost like meditation. Reminds me of what L said when we were out drinking Friday night (as usual). She and G were talking about scuba diving, about how being underwater hearing only your own breath and hardly being able to see anything unless it’s right in front of you gives you a feeling of being alone in the universe, a feeling of vulnerability and isolation, of insignificance. I commented, “That’s just like meditation.” No reaction.

I don’t need to go scuba diving in the Philippines to experience such a feeling.

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