Journals – What happened to us?
Who has never written a journal? A diary full of tiny secrets you were sure your life would end if anyone read it – but truth was nobody cared about them; a travel journal, even small scraps written on the back of photos and on polaroids; a blog begun by curiosity which eventually lead to exposing your whole life to strangers. A journal with your thoughts and sketches, filled with candy wrappings and cards and pressed flowers. It is art of some sort, something we do to satisy ‘our deep need to complain’ and to remember who we are and what we have gone trough.
Now imagine this multiplied by thousands. The 1000journals project started when some guy sent out to the world a thousand journals to be written by whoever found them, and then passed on to the next person. Only one journal came back, but that doesn’t really matter. Just the fact that they are out there, filled with the minds of several people makes us think of all the possible ways of living there are, and why weren’t they returned. Imagination is always more powerful than the naked reality. For those of us who haven’t found those journals yet, there is a similar project on the net called 1001journals in which you have to scan your journal and upload it to the site.
Scanning my journals would be a drag, since I actually – remark that I like saying ‘actually’ – do not keep them long: perfectionism makes me rewrite them and eventually rip them apart. So I must have only two journals after almost 20 years writing them. It is just as well that I did not set out to write a book, otherwise I would be the most prolific writer in the whole world that has never written a book.
Please check out the 1000journals project, the movie about it (yes, we have bananas!) and the 1001journals project.
Tags: journal
