Wednesday, September 27, 2017

Adding old journal entries, part 2


I seem to work in spates, bringing my old journal entries and poems into the electronic age. I've had a stack of journals haunting me at the foot of the bed for months, now. So I've been revisiting old writing for the past week. (Besides Facebook, where I continue to mine bits from the recent past, is boring as feckall these days.)

Right now, I'm mostly revisiting work from the 1980s. There's more to choose from. The 1990s and early 2000s will be lean years, as it was about that time when I sloughed off writing in my journals. Well, I was writing, but it had more to do with going back to school, academics, rather than writing, or art.

I finally got around to adding my Azores and Lisbon journals from 2001 (high on my To Do list), and it proved to be a rich trove. Only thing is, I didn't particularly need more work from 2001. The years 2000, or 2003-06, were lean, yes. But it seems to work that way, they years where I don't need more work, I have lots of entries.

My goal still is 52 posts per year, and I have finally fleshed out the lean 1980s years, 1984 in particular, was spare, until I discovered there was a whole lot more to my Hawaii journals, as compared to first read, or rather first skim.


Once I gave myself permission to type up journal entries, mostly travelogues, and musings—I found many bits of embedded poems. My 1981 Port Townsend journal entries are much richer than I expected. (July, August ).  It's really strange delving back into the past like this. But it's also a unique opportunity to reclaim the past, sans the emotional minefields I seemed to inhabit at the time.

Also, with an eye to the past, I am looking at that old work with a new eye, envisioning what can be moved into prose. Besides, it serves as a timeline of sorts. How many of us, other than Samuel Pepys, can say with certainty what we were doing September, 1987? Apparently not much, as I have no entry!

But 1997, I can reconstruct the past. After I had read with Gene Ruggles, at the Cafe International, I was huckleberrying and then, cleaning berries. Lots of them. Which, by 2000, turned into a monloogue piece for my MA/MFA correlative. (Probably why I have no new work for 2000 is because I was revising so much old work.)

My last spate at rendering (wrestiling?) journals into an electronic format, was June of 2017. (See Adding old journal entries) I've made some progress. The years 1980, and 1982 may be hopeless as I've exhausted my writing journals. The Napa journals, which I have yet to delve into, promise to be squirrely as I often used them to revise existing work, so the dates are faux amis.

I also try to post original entries from journals beneath revised poems (when I find them—and I'm often surprised by the genesis) so there's a record. I was surprised to see how much I revised certain poems, or how I revisited a theme over and over (William T. Wiley, for example), trying to put it right.

And to think all this madness began when I opened a corrupt file, dated ca. 2000, then another, and another, back to the mid 1980s, and realized I needed to update my electronic work, and bring it into time present, before all was forever lost. I suppose, at one point, I will also need to make hard copy of all my files as well. Ugh! Until then, Blogger will have to do. I have close to 2500 entries published.

After all, if I don't curate my own work, who else will?
My 1980s TO DO list dated from February (and progress):
►  1987 (46) now (70) Mexico, Guatemala journals to transcribe
►  1986 (23) now (55) Napa, Mexico journals to transcribe
►  1985 (49) now (56) Napa, Baja journals to transcribe
►  1984 (41) now (65) Napa journals to transcribe
►  1982 (36) now (43) Centrum, Napa journals to transcribe (lost journal)!
►  1980 (36) now (41) Centrum? (loose-leaf journal—more may arise; some poems filed in 81 were from 1980, or earlier. I didn't date my work). I don't have high hopes for salvaging more work from 1980, or 1982.
 
This partial list will serve as a reminder, to myself, that I have made inroads, when I bog down, which is early and often.

    (Guatemala, and Chiapas journals to do.... also art and photo bits to add as well)

 ► 1980 (38) (41)

Electronic Archives
Fluffing out the blog timeline (home stretch) Has a tally (2/2017)
Scanning crusades 2014-2016, and beyond (12/2016)
Posting old Photos & Facebook Memories (4/2016)
Updating Old Poems (7/2015)
Trolling Old Journals (10/2015)
Paper Trail (10/2015)
Old work, new vision (11/2015)
Old Posts, New Posts (2/2014)
About Those First Drafts (2013)
Culling Old Files
Milestone Blogger stats
When This Blog Really Began—Aug 2008
About this collection of poems, memoir and whatnot As I opened old digital files, I noticed that some files (if I could open them), were missing chunks of text—most notably the end lines. So began the race was on to get all my digital stuff online. Most of this early stuff was posted mid-to late 2015.
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