I keep a journal. It began half a century ago and has continued pretty much constantly at a rate of about a volume every few months. This would amount to more than three hundred volumes, or fifty feet of bookshelf if I lined them up. They are not a work but a conversation with myself.

                 I conversed with myself because there was no one else, no parent, friend, lover in whom I could confide. While that’s no longer true – hasn’t been since Jane’s advent twenty years ago – the habit and joy had become too ingrained to forego. No dark secrets anymore, few anguished wails, but incessant, mostly pleasant scrutiny of my trek through time. My journal does not record, but inquire: where am I going, who am I, why am I feeling as I am, what now? I never wrote what I knew, only what I didn’t. Writing was my way of knowing.

                  My journal has been my most steadfast and dependable companion. Often we found ourselves alone, beset by woes, muted by responsibilities or shame. Who dares disclose their all! We wear different masks to achieve our ends: friend mask, swain mask, husband mask, father mask, boss mask, author mask, each a confection. My journals reviewed my performance in each costume like a theater critic, generally bemoaning the inadequacy of my imposture. My journal charitably forgave my failures as long as I’d tried. Whoever succeeds has aimed too low.

                  My journals taught me how to write. I wrote to be read – by me. Others may read my journals when I’m gone, but I was my audience, and about the written word, you may have noticed, I’m picky. I loathe dead prose, of which I’ve produced reams. How to improve? How to enliven without alienating? How to make this incessant prattler likeable? As actors learn performing before mirrors, so must writers. It startles me how poorly many smart folks write. Have they tried to read their stuff?

                  Published pieces sometimes emerged from my journals, but that was not their purpose. Their purpose was a heart-to-heart with me. Here was my confessional, where I tried to tell my truth, however discreditable. No bullshit. No polite palaver. No evasions if I could help it. No showing off. Here was me, best I could tell. The deeper I looked, the more I found. The story of my life my journals discovered. I had had no idea.

                  Writing one’s life peculiarly doubles it. Whatever happened to me, I was present as an observer, puzzling what to make of it. Anguish ceased to be anguish, it made such interesting material. I remember a morning in Rome describing my dinner with Jane the night before. It was our first date. Five hundred words in I realized, jeez, I loved her. 

                  During my two bouts of depression, I ceased to be able to write. I remember sitting in the window seat in our apartment scrawling “I have to write I have to write I have to write” for page after page without managing a syllable farther. It was as if I’d ceased to exist. Why bother being, the thought came to me, if I could not write? I agreed with Socrates: An unexamined life was not worth living. 

                  Before Jane, my journal was my best friend, available 24/7, interested, attentive, lenient, jollying me out of many a funk. I loved my journal as I never loved myself. Myself I was stuck with. My journal generously volunteered to hear me out. 

                  To love one’s story differs from loving oneself. If Narcissus had painted his portrait, he wouldn’t have drowned.