I’ve kept, for several years now, a journal intended for posthumity. Posthumity seems to be my coinage, the condition of being defunct. It differs from the more sanguine and sentimental construct, “afterlife”, which I adjudge self-delusive nonsense. There is no afterlife, only the half-life of memory, which is briefer than anyone likes to think. Even titans in their hour dwindle to trivia questions in no time flat. Who was James Buchanan’s vice-president? Who was James Buchanan, for that matter?
Habitude is supposed to sigh at evanescence: how sad! I find the prospect comforting. How liberating to be freed of expectations! To be able to say what one thinks, not as one ought! Never to be counted on to toe the party line!
I keep another journal, intended for contemporary consumption. And I compose these missives like a short-order chef for daily fare. I make them as candid as I can. But my awareness that you might one day encounter their author or his descendants imposes constraints. In the matter of politics, say. I would not, in this anxious hour, say a word against my fellow warriors, for disloyalty when besieged is treachery. In posthumity, faithlessness is inconceivable. Same with loved ones. I will never publish a word against any of them: with writing as with medicine, primum non nocere, first do no harm. Yet – mum’s the word! – my loved ones are as imperfect and complicated as anybody else, supplying plenty of grist for contemplation.
Most emphatically, my posthumity frees me to investigate myself. My soul is full of guck, graceless and ungracious impulses to which I’d never confess, humiliating fears and suspicions, vicious imaginings. On balance, I’m not viler than average, I figure, but heaven forfend you glimpse my entirety! Fiction writers may channel such chagrin into characters, from whom they distance themselves. Dickens could insist he wasn’t Madame DeFarge or Uriah Heep, he only dreamt them, but that’s hooey. How could he depict such monsters if he did not know them and how could he know them unless they inhabited him? I lack, alas, any penchant for invention. I can only say what I see. And much of what I see I’m reluctant to share.
Posthumity forgives. As Hamlet sums his dead dad, “He was a man, take him for all in all. I shall not look upon his like again.” The dead can’t be punished, for they’ve already paid the ultimate price. No blushing among bleached bones.
Into my posthumous journal words flow as if from a sliced artery. I don’t worry about charming any eventual reader – what’s the use? Emily Dickinson enjoyed this freedom with her poems, almost all of which she deposited in a trunk, read by no one else. The truth of her poems – and their odd orthography – would have startled her Amherst neighbors, but so what? No tattling amidst the dust.
I disclose the existence of my scribbled archive not to excite curiosity but to recall our abundance. Each of us contains levels and levels to explore, strata as vivid and varied as the Grand Canyon’s, from which we can derive education and consolation. We’re all richer than Croesus if we take the time to look. But our minds get stuck in our paltry present, in the accidents of the instant, in hopes and schemes that often disappoint. We allow ourselves to be unhappy by not using our heads.
Our consumer culture inculcates dissatisfaction, so we’ll buy more. Politicians promote discontent to win our vote. We’re so stuffed with gripes we’ve no room left for hallelujah, which is far more fun.