Writing as Refuge: A Journal as a Personal Sanctuary
Writing As Refuge: A Daily Journal Practice Rooted in Ritual and Discipline
I started maintaining a journal in graduate school, and now two decades later, writing in my journal is a daily ritual.
My day begins with the journal’s blank page and a caffé latte. I savor the blend of creamy milk and the espresso’s bittersweet taste, my large porcelain mug warm in my hand. When at home in Concord, I usually sit in the same deep upholstered armchair, my feet on a leather blue ottoman, the journal laid open on one of the armrests. On cold mornings, a fire burns in the hearth next to my chair.
My first journal had a bright red cloth cover and paper of good quality. Aesthetics still guide my choices. I prefer a spiral-bound journal with a hard cover and will search for the one that appeals most. I write with the same Montblanc roller ball pen, a long-ago gift from my mother. I like the weight of the instrument in my hand and the way the ink flows smoothly across the page.
I just completed my forty-second journal. I will keep this one, as I have the forty-one that preceded it, all of them stored in plastic containers on a set of shelves in the basement. I will be the only person who ever reads them.
There is a freedom I enjoy on the pages of my journal that is not available to me when I sit before my computer’s blank screen. I know my words are for an audience of one. My articulate internal critic is silent.
I begin each entry by noting the hour, date, and location, and then write without a goal in mind, letting my thoughts wander. As soon as I begin, a calm envelops me. I know that whatever else happens during the day, I will have begun with words on the page. It is a discipline that serves my other writing.
Sometimes I write to clarify my thinking or to release on to the page some concern that would otherwise occupy my thoughts later in the day. Other times, I write to remember the color of clouds on a particular day, the insistent song of a bird, or a feeling I wish to honor.
This quiet ritual, a habit developed over many years, is an exercise in attentiveness, one that makes me more present in my own life.
A Journal to Revisit the Past
From time to time, I pull a journal from my collection to return to the past, to a specific time and place I would not be able to access through memory alone. I can find earlier versions of myself in those pages, a woman who is not a stranger but still someone who existed then and is different now, like Heraclitus’s ever-changing river. I immerse myself in the sensory details on the page, the descriptions of my surroundings as they existed then.
I can return to the enclosed porch in our Pittsburgh home, a place we departed some fifteen years ago. I see myself sharing the sofa with Tom, our beloved terriers between us. We are surrounded by trees, and sunlight filtered through the leaves changes the yellow walls to the palest green. Within the journal’s pages, our dogs are still alive and thriving.
I revisit the large property we renovated and restored outside of Philadelphia. We’d thought of that place as our forever home, but we are no longer living there. In my journal, however, the house and landscape exist as they did when we were the caretakers. I have no interest in seeing what the new owners have made of the place. They have their own story to tell, and I have mine.
Another journal takes me to France and our friends’ farm, where we gathered over many long summer evenings under their spreading plane tree. My entries almost always include the menu for whatever meal we enjoyed together, starting with the aperitif. The farm belongs to new owners now, and our friends have moved to another part of Provence.
That time during which we were all younger and eager to make of everything a celebration has ended, except for the way in which it endures on the page.
A Private Writing Practice That Sustains My Creative Life
My journal acts as a repository for my memories. I can explore them at my leisure, either in new writing or in my daydreams. They, at times, fuel creativity.
And the journal itself serves as a kind of personal sanctuary. It is a place without judgment or a sense of urgency. I can linger there as long as I wish.