Untold Stories Part I – The Stories of Others

American Author Walt Whitman

I once geeked out over the one-thousand-page opus on creative imagination, Road to Xanadu, written by John Livingston Lowes. He used the journals of Samuel Coleridge as his primary source and along the way hinted at treasure troves of untold worth in the travel journals that Coleridge used to fuel his own inspiration.

The “opus” is not the only excursion I’ve taken into the mysterious realm of hidden thoughts. I once fell in love with Walt Whitman while strolling through his life via his poetry and prose, the prose being largely made up of journal entries. And I am currently building a relationship with Henry David Thoreau as I read through parts of his journaling experience.

Reading someone’s journal is intimate. The writer often has no intention of making his or her thoughts public and so the style has an unguarded quality about it, as though a friend is letting you in on a secret. At other times the writer may realize that there is a high likelihood that others will read the thoughts so freely shared. Walt Whitman had this sense and so from time to time he turned directly to the reader with a personal address, as though initiating dialogue. And I have answered him… Once, years after I read the book on his poetry and prose, I found myself in a quite Whitman sort of circumstance. There was no one to talk to who would understand what I had to say as well as Walt, so I talked to him, responding to the conversation he had initiated over one-hundred and fifty years earlier.

The journals and even some letters that have been handed down to me from ancestors, those personal, off the cuff accounts of their lives, have left me with powerful deposits as well, ones I’m sure the journaler would be surprised to hear about.

My grandmother kept journals, very simple event focused journals keeping things light; a record of the weather up in the right hand corner, events of the day, a list of the comings and goings of visitors. And yet, contained in those journals was enough information to confirm something about my own life I already knew to be true. My family, at the time one particular journal was written, was spinning out of control. In her 1961 journal Grandma Mom recorded simple events, but the unspoken truth was there to read between the lines: “Gayle brought the kids over a few days ago. She’s not back yet.” “Haven’t seen Gayle yet, we’re looking for her to pick up the kids.” Gayle brought the kids over again.” My mother, Gayle, was trying to hold our family together and things were falling through the cracks. It was a poignant experience to see that chaotic time validated in Grandma Mom’s journal.

My own father’s journals from WWII became a catalyst for me to write a book that in many ways became a much-needed healing process. Letters from my father’s mother to her sister also shed some light on his home life that I would have otherwise been completely ignorant of. And it helped to set some of the context I needed to understand him a little better, and write a better book. Journals and other simple notes are a unique form of story, most times left untold. But when we take the time and effort to peer into the sanctum of so personal a treasure, we find something often unparalleled in terms of an unedited life.

What dialogue, across time and space, have you had or do you wish to have?

Writing Prompt Word For the Week: Bridge