In the process of trying to de-clutter my home, I found a Rubbermaid bin full of my childhood and young adult journals. Notebooks full of nightly confessionals, which started when I was ten and continued on fairly regularly until about the age of 23 or so. As a 50th birthday gift to myself, I decided to reread them.
Shortly after that, I decided to burn them. Page by page, after reading. Not really for any particular reason. Nothing clandestine or hidden from public view resides in these journals. Maybe they would be more interesting if there were. Mostly, I don’t want whoever has to clean out my house after I die to find them and feel bad for throwing them away. Or worse, to read them.
As inspirational prompts go, listening to your adolescent self talk about how angry or sad or disappointed you are, and also (quite often) how much fun you used to have, is an interesting exercise. It is similar to recalling a dream—you remember some details of the dramas as they unfolded, but mostly your mind settles into a general feeling associated with whatever image you recall. And then sometimes, you surprise even yourself with what you did or did not do, like that night when you found yourself flying over a city with flames coming out of your mouth.
The Night I Was a Dragon All the innocents look up. I don’t know them, but they are scared. It is my fire they fear so hot, coming out of my mouth. I am flying too fast to see their faces. I don’t think I know them, though I’m not looking closely enough to tell. I almost envy their world, the one they hardly believe in anymore; the one they have forgotten somehow, along the way. Nothing prepares you for the regret of doing only what you were asked to do, of not doing what you wanted to. But you don’t know that as you maneuver, effortlessly, over shadowed horizons, over submerged imaginations, once infinite and fine. This is what you believe: I could not see their faces. And if you were me, what would you have done? I accelerate. It is time to go home.