Radishes & Gooseberries
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February 5, 2002 One of the many interesting concepts in online journaling is that of the collaborative entry, in which a single topic is chosen and everyone who is a part of the collab. whips out their own spin on it. From what I have seen of these (which arguably is very little) most demand that the participants contribute each and every time a new topic is put forth, generally on a monthly basis. Given the on-again off-again nature of this little project here known as Radishes & Gooseberries, I'd be a highly unlikely candidate for such a collaboration. There is, however, one collaboration out there for which I would be a good fit. It's called Random Acts Of Journaling. There's no must-contribute-each-time-or-begone restriction as well as a multitude of topics from which to choose each month. What follows here began as an email reply to one of the January participants. What I soon realized after sending the message was that with some editing, it could be my own unofficial entry for one of the January prompts. Bear with me while I first copy and paste, then hack and slash, err edit, what I wrote. Different people find different ways to define their lives for others. Some use music; some use art; some use poetry or books. Take us on a tour of your museum. Invite us to your concert. Show us your book of life. Show us a piece of yourself using the works of others. I'm sitting here thinking of what music I could pick as the soundtrack to my life. It's a lot tougher than I thought; perhaps I've never been introspective from that perspective (sounds like rap lyrics) before. I've always found that I can see into the hearts and souls of others far better than I can myself. Turn that perception inwards and I honestly wouldn't know where to begin to look. My life I see as an antique desk, full of many tiny drawers in which the memories and feelings of time and place are stored away. Want to know about my time in Bermuda as a child? Open this drawer here. What about my parents divorce? That drawer there. Some drawers are stuck; others slide open with the slightest tug. The "funniest" thing is that I don't know how many drawers there are in total. That being said, there is one song that pops into my mind that can possibly summarize my life as whole, and that's In My Life, by The Beatles. There are places I'll remember
Here's a thought. Let's look into the two drawers I used as examples above and see what's there given the context of the prompt. Bermuda - The 2 years I lived in there, from age 7 to 9, were good years overall as best as I can recall. There were no schoolyard bullies as yet in my life; those would start appearing later on once we were back in Canada, the by-product of my being the new kid and having skipped a grade in Bermuda. (No one likes a younger smaller stranger coming in and being smarter than the incumbent tough guys.) How did I describe Bermuda a couple of entries ago? "The epitome of halcyon days" I believe I said. Halcyon Days - Ogden Nash My parents divorce - This drawer turns out to be all jumbly inside, for my parents separated in 1982 but the divorce wasn't final until 1984. For the sake of argument, I'll focus on the time of separation. Dad moved out not long after I graduated from Grade 12, though he and Mom were sleeping in separate areas of the house before he left. Thinking back upon that time, the strongest sensation is that it was, in all aspects, a time of upheaval in my life. I was 18, didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, was struggling through the balancing act of late teenagehood, you name it. I was also most naive concerning matters of the opposite sex, often confusing crushes, lust and/or love with each other until I didn't know what was what. My easily befuddled heart was seemingly broken on many an occasion. The problem with trying to determine what "work of others" best suits that period of life is that there was so much turmoil, in retrospect, going on in my life. I think back and get an overall sense, from which nothing specific jumps out as best representing that time. There are some near misses though. Subdivisions - Rush Growing up it all seems so
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