July 21, 2022 Diaries September Notebook, 2018 By Daniel Poppick At my old job, I wrote descriptions of objects; at my new job, I write descriptions of talks, concerts, classes, Jewish holiday services, and other events. Once I was in the business of selling matter. Now I am in the business of selling time. But how to use it? * Parable of Uncle Martin September 2, 2018 1:13 P.M. Dear Uncle Martin, Just wanted to drop you a quick note to wish you a very happy birthday—100 is a big one! Apologies for the belated note, though I’m sure you were inundated that day. I hope this finds you well and that we can see each other again soon. Lots of love, Dan Read More
July 11, 2022 Diaries Diary, 2011 By Andrew Martin To my retroactive disappointment, the journals I keep—I fill about one marble composition book a year—are an undifferentiated, undated jumble of fiction drafts, semifictionalized self-reflections, actual diary entries, to-do lists, lesson plans, notes for articles I’m writing, and strange doodles often in the form of heavily inked trapezoidal grids. I wish that the notebooks more frequently included scenes like this, in which I simply recorded, without much commentary or elaboration, what I remembered right after a conversation with my younger sister sometime in 2011, when she would have been thirteen and I twenty-five. Too often when I write personally I simply record states of mind, which have been frustratingly static and melodramatic over the years and often seem to be stylized in a way that I find unconvincing, even to myself. This page presents a clearer picture of what life was like at the time—quizzing my sister about her religious beliefs, asking her about TV shows and who Bruno Mars was. I was encouraging her to be open-minded about religion, even as a devout nonbeliever myself, probably out of some quasiparental instinct. She described an idiosyncratic cosmography: no to God, yes to guardian angels. Apparently she wanted to be a doctor at the time. (She ended up going to art school, a family tradition.) I was living in New York, home for the weekend, visiting my parents in New Jersey. The next decade took me to Montana, Virginia, and Boston before I circled back to Brooklyn just in time for the pandemic. I saw my sister in Philadelphia recently. She was driving the car, and we talked about what was on her mind now. Gay bars, the Supreme Court. I did not ask about angels. Andrew Martin is the author of the novel Early Work and the story collection Cool for America.
July 7, 2022 Diaries Diary, 2001 By Molly Dektar “Today I’m REALLY worried about death. I almost started crying. However, my new calligraphy kit is AWSOME.” “My dollys are so fun to play with. They bend and move and pose. : ) P.S. the police think that Peterson might be guilty because there was blood all over the scene of the crime and a used condom (EW!) and a bloody soda can with hair on it.” Read More
June 21, 2022 Diaries Solstice Diaries By Ellyn Gaydos Last night I hit a deer, a fawn actually. Just a ragged thing still with its spots, it could’ve been born that day. Its mother stood on the side of the road. I saw her first and only the fawn when it was too late, my own new child in the backseat. I was immediately seized with the guilt that I shouldn’t be there and the deer should, that I was in the wrong place throttling a car through the woods. The next day at the farm where I work the lettuces were missing their hearts, the best, sweetest part eaten by deer. It is getting to be summer when things like this happen. Read More
June 13, 2022 Diaries Cambridge Diary, 2014 By J. D. Daniels Photograph by J.D. Daniels. Saturday. July. 7:15 am Yoga. Translating Bayard’s Peut-on appliquer la littérature à la psychanalyse? from a Spanish copy of ¿Se puede aplicar la literatura al psicoanálisis? One word at a time. Speed limit, 25 mph. To Cartagena with Jamie this 22-26 September. Tonight Jamie, Josh and Ellen will come for dinner. Humid, overcast, drizzling rain, 60˚F but feels much hotter. Sunday. 6:10 am. 68˚F Beginner’s Orchids. Phalaenopsis, cymbidium, oncidium. Reconciliation with the father. Henry IV, Part One. Ideas for essays on films. Sorcerer at Brattle vs. Clouzot’s Wages of Fear. Or Stark’s The Hunter vs. Point Blank. A man who knows nothing about movies writes these words about a movie he enjoyed. Cycled yesterday with Jamie through green Concord, in preparation for 2015 in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Ran three miles. Read More
June 8, 2022 Diaries Jottings, 2022 By Diane Williams I did confide in a diary from the time I was nine or ten. I remember one diary well from this era—red plaid vinyl, with a strap and a fancy lock. The key was lost and the strap had to be cut. I gushed into spiral, lined notebooks in my twenties. Rereading any of these created massive disappointment, so I destroyed them—I am not sad to say. I feel anger toward them, about them. That little girl or the woman understood little or was unable say what she meant to say, and this is one reason I labor on with my fiction. Most of these daily jottings for stories in progress will remain forever lost or hidden, but this sketch work represents, for me, a purer form of diary. Here is one page from this morning. Diane Williams is the author of ten books of fiction. She has a new collection of stories forthcoming from Soho Press next year. She is the founder and editor of NOON.