Pain is easy to write. In pain we're all happily individual. But what can one write about happiness?

[faeriemere]

I just finished listening to Graham Greene's The End of the Affair, read by Colin Firth. It's an incredibly sad story, miserable and hateful and heartbreaking by turns, yet I did find parts of it very relatable. Most particularly, I keep thinking about Sarah's diary. Of course, it's extremely detailed for a diary, and very literary (it being a

Comments

[coventry_lance]

That's a really interesting perspective. I was just having a discussion the other day how I think people who don't journal or something similar have vague memories of events, maybe a couple really clear memories, and the details of everything else are lost forever. It stemmed from a discussion about whether it was turning one's back on one's past to delete embarrassing entries, kind of like pretending it never happened

[faeriemere]

I don't wholly disagree, especially for older memories. Which, I suppose, all memories must inevitably become. I do often find when re-reading that what I wrote stimulates memory and brings up other details that I'd forgotten. But still, there are some things that I can't quite bear to put into words. Generally, either it feels like it would cheapen the memories, or it's too embarrassing to actually verbalize them. Some of those moments I'm glad to lose; others, I'm sorry to lose, but as long as I don't write them down, my innate memory of them stays clearer than it would if I did write them down. Writing them down brings them back clearly for the writing, and for the re-reading; but the rest of the time, I find that they're much fuzzier than they would have been otherwise