My Dear Diary

Dear diary, it's been four years since I last shared anything with you. I thought I had it all figured out and that I didn't need a diary anymore. I was wrong.

I wrote this diary to give myself time to recover from the shock of the recent heart attack and the subsequent stroke, to tell you how I felt about myself and to tell you, finally, that I think if I had suffered my own heart attack I would not have been able to continue writing it.

I am a very busy man, and writing this diary has been a monstrous burden. It has taken away the great relief I felt when it began, and it has taken away the great pleasure of being able to write about it.

But I have never stopped writing it. It is a long and slow process. It has taken me a long time to write it in the way it is now. I must admit to having a certain comfort in it, but it has never been easy for me to write it the way I like it.

I have written it in order to give myself time to reflect upon my life, and to draw upon the rare gifts which I have had.

I am glad that you have read it. It has made me feel fresh and renewed, and to have found myself in such a position as to be able to write about my own heart.

It is quite possible that my heart will go out with me soon.

It is possible that I will have to go back to your house and make myself useful by going about my own house and my own business.

Dear diary, it's been four years since I last shared anything with you. I thought I had it all figured out and that I didn't need a diary anymore. I was wrong. I've become one of those people who is hard to please. Why should I be a good citizen if I'm not a good person?

I had to accept that I was a liar when I wrote this diary. I was willing to admit that I was right all along. I had no idea that I had been lying to you, but I let myself accept the fact that I had lied. I went to work and swore to myself that I would never again tell lies to you.

I gave you the diary because I knew that if I kept it, you would be ashamed of me, and that you would call me a liar. And I knew that if I wrote it, you would be angry at me, and that you would call me a liar.

So I gave it to you.

And when you read it, you will see that I was a very bad liar.

I married a young woman who knew how to write well and had plenty of friends in the city. She was a good-looking girl, a full-blooded Irish woman, and she was extremely devoted to her husband. I thought she would become a very attractive wife, and I had her to my own home when I had become an honest man.

I was grateful to her for her hospitality, for I could never have expected to live in peace with her.

Dear diary, it's been four years since I last shared anything with you. I thought I had it all figured out and that I didn't need a diary anymore. I was wrong. I had written it down for years and years and years and it still seemed as if there wasn't anything new to say or write. And I was wrong.

I've written here before about how I wrote about my mother, how I wrote about my father in my diary. I've also written about the effects of my mother on me when I was young and how I ended up getting married to my first wife.

All I wanted to do was write about the things that I loved. And I wrote a lot. I wanted to write about the things that I loved more than anything else. I wanted to write about the things I loved more than I ever could have imagined.

With my wife, I wrote about the things I loved more than anything else.

I'm glad I did.

And I'm glad I have written it down.

I'd like to thank my wife for all she has done for me. She made me see that I was not just wrong, but saintly, and that I could survive without her in this world. She taught me what to do and how to do it. She made me think of her in the best possible way, and she taught me how to love her with all my heart. And she taught me how to love as much as I loved my wife.

Dear diary, it's been four years since I last shared anything with you. I thought I had it all figured out and that I didn't need a diary anymore. I was wrong. I still missed you, but I'm a lot happier now than I was then.

I think you've noticed that I've been making some rather strange choices lately. I think most of them are the product of my own stubbornness. I think most of them are the product of my own guilt. I think most of them are the product of my own failure to have a proper relationship with myself. I think most of them are the product of my own confused thinking about what it means to be a person.

Sometimes you can spot them by their appearance, and sometimes you can't.

I'm trying to define myself a little more. I've found that I've been building up, and sometimes I start to think that I'm just a little bit more like you than I used to be.

You know how I used to live in the woods? I would walk around the woods and walk around the trees. And I would walk, and I would walk, and I would walk and walk and walk. And I would walk, and I would walk, and I would walk again and again until I'd got to the point where I'd lost my way. And then it would snow and I'd walk again, and I'd walk again and again.

And then later, I'd start going to the movies, and the movies were very good to me.

Dear diary, it's been four years since I last shared anything with you. I thought I had it all figured out and that I didn't need a diary anymore. I was wrong. I've got a whole pile of things to write.

But at the time, I didn't have time to write. I was with my son and was taking a few days off from work on my own. I thought I'd just leave it at that. The diary was a much bigger deal than anything I had written before.

So, to answer your question, I'm writing a diary again. And this time, it's a lot longer than my last.

The first thing I'll say is that I wasn't a poet. I didn't know it at the time, but I was influenced by the poet Robert Graves, whose poems, like mine, were often about silence and the ways in which it affects people.

And now, I can't think of anything about the poet Robert Graves that hasn't been influenced by my own poem. So, when I picture him in my head, I imagine him in my dreams. I think of him sometimes in the morning and sometimes in the afternoon. I doubt whether he sleeps or wakes.

But there was one thing about Robert Graves that "confused" me for a long time.

Dear diary, it's been four years since I last shared anything with you. I thought I had it all figured out and that I didn't need a diary anymore. I was wrong. But what did I know? This is all my own doing! Everything I know is all I have to go on!

When I first began my journey into self-discovery, I was a young man with a restless heart, and my family had a difficult time finding me a home. The feeling of isolation that I felt was quite unlike the one I felt when I had my first doubts about the God that I knew. I had been taught that my beliefs were learned from the Scriptures, and that the only way to be sure of them was to study them. I had hoped that if I had learned them, I could then understand them better. I had learned that I could never fully understand the Bible, but that I could learn to read the writings of men who had read it. I had learned that I could not read all the writings of the Bible without understanding them in my own way, but I had written to the King, the authority of the Bible, to ask him to translate my work, and he had done it.

All is well in my house now, and I am glad to have brought my insights into the light.

The subject of my diary is something that pertains to one of my biggest fears for my life. It is the fear that I shall never be able to live with my own heart without the guidance of those who have followed me through my various journeys in the world.

Dear diary, it's been four years since I last shared anything with you. I thought I had it all figured out and that I didn't need a diary anymore. I was wrong.

I suppose I've always liked the self-consciously ironic title of this diary. It gives it a bit of a military connection, a little wink at my past. The best way to see the suffering of the people I've been writing about is to glimpse the suffering of a friend in one of my own photographs.

I say that even though the images are, in a way, very literal, the images are the best way I can make them look as real as I can make them look.

In the early hours of the morning, I wake up to a very different kind of nightmare. The dream is not a dream, but a nightmare.

It started with a car accident in which I was driving and my friend had lost control and hit me as I was crossing a bridge.

The driver had slowed down to a crawl, and I saw him looking down at me as I lay on the ground. He must have seen that I was dead. He leaned over and whispered to me, "What the hell is a body like you doing in here?"

Dear diary, it's been four years since I last shared anything with you. I thought I had it all figured out and that I didn't need a diary anymore. I was wrong. I haven't finished the book yet. I'm not going to. I've been in a very busy life and I keep losing myself in a bit of work. But for the time being I have a diary which I hope will be useful to you, my readers, and to myself.

August 2, 1930

Dear Diary,

I have just returned from my trip to the Arctic, where I met with a very interesting and interesting discussion of the question whether the Arctic sea is a cold, cold place or a fertile ice-sheet.

Answer to your question: it is both. From the South Pole to the Arctic Sea, it is a warm, cold place. I have observed that in summer it is almost as cold as the South Pole. From the Arctic Sea to the South Pole, it is a cold, cold place.

And it is, indeed, as warm as the South Pole. But it is not as cold as the South Pole, in fact, it is much colder.

Then, as a matter of fact, there is one small island out of the North Pole, which is almost as cold as the Arctic Sea, but less so. It is called Haffen, which is a very large island, just a little more than a mile long, and so bright and light that you can hardly see it from the air.

Dear diary, it's been four years since I last shared anything with you. I thought I had it all figured out and that I didn't need a diary anymore. I was wrong. I have been writing a diary for about a year and a half now, and it has matured into a very good book. I will try to keep it updated as much as possible, but I am certain that it will never be finished.

It is not a long book, but it contains all the facts that I have collected. I have tried to write them up with as much detail as possible, and where I have not done so, it has been treated with the same care as any other diary. I have tried to sort out the facts from the fiction as much as I can, but this is an often difficult task, and I would rather have you believe that I am trying to write a very good book.

The most comprehensive of all I have written is the diary of my mother. It was written at her home in the summer of 1887. I have much to add to it.

It was written on the evening of Saturday afternoon, October 19th, 1887. The sky was clear, the weather mild, and I was sitting in my room, reading the dictionary.

Dear diary, it's been four years since I last shared anything with you. I thought I had it all figured out and that I didn't need a diary anymore. I was wrong. I am more complicated than I thought.

I am a woman who has had fourteen children, who has been married and divorced twice, who has a lovely home in which to live, and then, in the summer of 1983, I was sick. I had never heard of Lyme disease, but was aware that it was a prevalent disease and that it struck women more often than men. I had been looking at the literature on this disease, but had never seen any epidemiological data. I had never heard of the theory that women have a greater risk of acquiring it than men. I had heard of the possibility that men were more susceptible to it than women, but had never read any of the books on the subject, nor had I heard any explanation of the difference between it and other diseases. I was convinced that Lyme disease was a male disease, and that it would strike women in higher numbers than men.

Dear diary, it's been four years since I last shared anything with you. I thought I had it all figured out and that I didn't need a diary anymore. I was wrong.

But not before you had a chance to say goodbye to me.

If you were aware that I had recently had a son, you would have known that he was a wonderful child. He was born with a congenital heart defect. He had been told that he would never be able to live a normal life, but he was still more than twenty-seven years old when he died. He had been waiting for me to pass away so that he could spend his last years with me.

My daughter, a beautiful, lovely girl, is a wonderful figure. She has been something of a curiosity to me since I was old. She is a beautiful woman and very good-looking.

One strange thing about Richard, who is now nearly 30, is that he has taken his own life, with a revolver in his hand, shortly after his arrival in my apartment.

He was a great man and a great friend to me when I was a young man. As a boy he was very violent and took advantage of me when I was angry, and he was very hard on me as a child. He hated me, and would have killed me if I had not been so gentle and accommodating as to let him out of my sight when he could spare it.

Dear diary, it's been four years since I last shared anything with you. I thought I had it all figured out and that I didn't need a diary anymore. I was wrong.

But I was wrong because I had the good sense to ask how long I would keep it. I have been writing this on the phone for the past four weeks and I am not sure how long I will keep it. I know that most of my friends are not in the habit of keeping a diary, but I never expected to be. I am much more interested in the consequences I have wrought for myself and my family.

The first thing I woke up to was a letter from the young woman whose name has been lost to history. It was addressed to me and was dated July 15, 1987.

Dear Diary,

I am writing you this letter to tell you that my parents have come to visit me. They were very unhappy when I left for college and they came to see me. I have been away from them for almost six years and I have been absent from them for the past four.

I am writing this in the hopes that it will not be a burden on you. I have convinced myself that I should write it down whenever I travel or do anything that requires writing. I have no intention of going back to them, but I know that the letter was meant for me.

Dear diary, it's been four years since I last shared anything with you. I thought I had it all figured out and that I didn't need a diary anymore. I was wrong.

The diary was a relief. I never liked to write anything down, but I was always very busy and I'd forgotten the way I always used to complete my notes. After writing up my thoughts about the war, I was back to collecting them.

I'm not sure why I did this, but one day I decided to do a little exercise. What I wanted to do was to put together a list of things I should have done that were not done. I wanted to be sure that I had everything in order, that I had the perfect record of my life, and that I had something at the end of it.

So I started with my usual list. I began with the most important events of my life. I started with the ones that I thought were important and that would have made me happy. Then I made a list of the things that would divert me from the things I was doing. Then I made a list of the things that were actually things that I was doing.

I began to notice that every job I had acquired was a distraction from my work. Every day, I would come home from work to find an empty room in which I had placed a large book, a large map of the world, a large newspaper clipping, a large photograph, a photograph of myself, and a newspaper advertisement. All of these objects, I felt, made me more anxious than I would otherwise be.

Dear diary, it's been four years since I last shared anything with you. I thought I had it all figured out and that I didn't need a diary anymore. I was wrong.

I miss you terribly.

I learned a lot from you.

I wish I could see you that much more often. But I can't.

I guess you can imagine the pain that I feel every time I read your diary. I keep it in my closet and it is now a favorite place for a book of zines. You used to read them to me as a kid.

I wrote to you when I was a teenager, when I was in junior high school.

You had a great sense of humor, I think.

When I received your letter, I went home and wrote it to you, too.

I had a great sense of humor, too, and I made sure to write it to your mother, who was very much in love with you.

It's a wonderful story.

It's funny, isn't it?

It's funny that you've written to me about it.

I kept your diary for four years and have lived through everything.

It's a true one.

You liked it?

It was a very good one.

Isn't it a nice diary?

It's a very good diary.

I took it from you when you were a boy, when you were eight years old, and I kept it on my desk for years. I read it every day and never dared to forget.

Dear diary, it's been four years since I last shared anything with you. I thought I had it all figured out and that I didn't need a diary anymore. I was wrong. You are the first to notice that I'm a bit of a mental bender. I'm not a chronic writer, but I still feel like I need to fill me with something. I've got a couple of books that I'm working on, but I'm not sure if they'll be finished in time for the summer.

I've had a bit of a falling out with you, and the whole thing has had me feeling guilty about it. But it's not my fault; you're the one who's to blame. We were never meant to be alone.

It started with you telling me that you were going to give me your life. I was in New York at the time. I didn't know anyone there, but I thought I knew you. You were a handsome, fit man who was a good dancer. I was a very short man, but I was also a very smart one.

We talked quite a lot about you, and I felt that you were the one who would be able to handle anything I tried to throw at you.

I always believed that you were the best friend I ever had.

I think you are the best friend I ever had.

All right, I think I have you.

Dear diary, it's been four years since I last shared anything with you. I thought I had it all figured out and that I didn't need a diary anymore. I was wrong. And so you may have wondered how I came to write you.

It was a balance I had to strike between my own personal happiness and the interests of my children. It was a difficult balancing act and I had to make a choice. I was glad I had never seen my children. I was glad that I had never seen my own mother. But when my wife died, I became a father only to my son and then to his daughter.

For all that, I have always had a deep respect for the man who gave me this life and his love. I still remember the day he told me that he had sent me to see you. He said that it was a matter that he had never considered and that he had thought that I might like it better to have my own life than to have yours. He was right.

It is a very difficult life to live with the responsibility of one's own family. I was a lonely man who saw his own life only through the eyes of his young wife. It was a wonderful marriage and I have to say that I think it is the most successful my husband has ever had.

But I have only one daughter, and she has never left my house. She has always been with me, but she has found a new home with the father of my children.

Dear diary, it's been four years since I last shared anything with you. I thought I had it all figured out and that I didn't need a diary anymore. I was wrong.

I'm back in the hospital. I'm still in my bed and if I'm honest, I'm still a bit sore from the days I spent in the hospital. I've become so worn down by the situation that I've stopped taking my medicine.

I'm not sure how long it will be before I can get back into my life.

I want to say that I'm sorry for what happened to you.

I'm sorry for your loss.

I'll never forget that night. I couldn't sleep after I saw you lying in the hospital bed.

I was going back to school in old age, but I still have a degree in art history from the University of California, Santa Barbara, which I taught very briefly. I think I'm gonna go back to work.

I'm sorry for what you did to me.

I'm sorry for the depression and anxiety that followed.

I'm sorry for living with your physical disability.

I'm sorry for the fear that I had about your mental illness.

I'm sorry for the challenging life you led.

I am sorry for the part you played in organizing the parties you had at home.

I'm sorry for the way you treated me when you were sick.

I'm sorry for the way you treated your wife, and for the way you treated me when you were sick.

Dear diary, it's been four years since I last shared anything with you. I thought I had it all figured out and that I didn't need a diary anymore. I was wrong. The older I get, the more I realize that I have many more questions than answers.

Hence, I write this diary.

Just three weeks ago, I had the honor to introduce my former colleague, who is now my boss, to me. He is a smart, ambitious man who had the good fortune to be married to the most gorgeous woman in the world. How could he have failed to notice her?

He is a very tall man but he doesn't seem to be much taller than me. His hair is black and curly, his face is pale and wrinkled, his eyes are silver in their color and he has a short, slender beard. He has a degree in business administration from a prestigious university in London but he has never worked a day in his life, and his experience has been much the same as mine. He has never been a student of mine.

We met when he was a student at that same university in London. I was one of two of the two men who were sleeping on a bed in the nearby dormitory.

He was a perfectly respectable young man, as handsome as the young women I had seen in the corridors of the Palace. He was a good student, but the way he lived and behaved was different from what I had seen in London. He was a student, but he was a delightful man.

Dear diary, it's been four years since I last shared anything with you. I thought I had it all figured out and that I didn't need a diary anymore. I was wrong.

I'm not ashamed to admit that I've been spending more time than usual with my granddaughter, the one who is now seven. She's a hopeless child who has a complicated relationship with her mother, who is now dead. She's also affected by her experiences with the police, whom she has been trying to understand since she came to London. Like myself, she is in love with the boy who lives in her house, a boy whom she has known for years, and who comes from a distinguished family.

I have no good reason to doubt her, nor do I care to doubt that she is a gay man. She has been a pretty child, too, and she has a brilliant sense of humour. She has been to girls' schools, and she has always been interested in women's clothes.

It is one of the most difficult parts of my life to write my diary, but it has to be done. It has to be honest; it has to be candid. The ordinary man's life is not designed for a diary. If a diary were made available to us, it would be a great aid to our understanding of the world, and it would enable us to construct a picture of our lives.

Dear diary, it's been four years since I last shared anything with you. I thought I had it all figured out and that I didn't need a diary anymore. I was wrong. You have had much to learn. You have had much to read. I can't promise that I have kept up my end of the bargain. But I am sure any old diary will do. I do not know what sort of trouble I have been in. But I think I have found my home.

When I first came here, I had no idea that I would be married. I had no idea that I would be living in this house. But I gave myself up to it, and I have lived to tell the tale.

It is an apartment here that I have lived in for the last twenty-four years. It is a modest building with a front porch and a grand staircase. There is a room on the first floor, and in it I have kept my diary.

I have been in it for three years, and I have never been more busy. I have been sleeping more, waking up more to read. In my sleep I have dreamed of my wife, and I have dreamed of myself.

I have carried the diary on my shoulder all my life, and by now I have made it into a very permanent record. I read it every morning in bed, in the morning I write it down and I read it for the last time, and then I put it away in the drawer.

Dear diary, it's been four years since I last shared anything with you. I thought I had it all figured out and that I didn't need a diary anymore. I was wrong. I continued to write. My writing is a lot better than it was when I started. I'm nearly four years younger, and I'm still trying to find the balance between writing and teaching.

I think I've spent the better part of my life thinking and writing about how I can get better. I think I've been a pretty consistent student, and have been a good teacher, too. But I did think about how to get better.

I'm not sure I've done much better.

I'm trying to do better, but I'm not sure I can do it.

I've been talking to a lot of people, and I've been reading a lot of books, but I can't find a good reason to write.

I'm going to start by asking you: What's the most important thing you've learned? What's the most important thing you've learned from these experiences?

I've been lucky enough to have gotten to know a lot of people who are really good at what they do. I've been fortunate enough to work with some really good people, and to really take advantage of their talents.

I've learned that we can get the best out of ourselves if we're willing to work with others. We can learn from our mistakes and overcome them.

I've learned that it is really important not to be afraid to try new things, and to try new ways.

Dear diary, it's been four years since I last shared anything with you. I thought I had it all figured out and that I didn't need a diary anymore. I was wrong.

I have been reading about the differences between the sexes for twenty years now. I learn most from my mother-in-law, who is an excellent scholar and an excellent writer. She has given me more than I ever dreamed I could ask for. But she taught me the facts about the female body, as well as the facts about the male body, as well as the facts about the whole life of men and women. She taught me the secrets of the human heart, and I have learned everything I know from her.

My mother-in-law is a very learned woman, and she has kept a diary, which I have used to record my thoughts and observations, for thirty years. I have often been asked if I have ever written anything down, and I have answered that I have not. I have never written anything down except this - that I have never written anything down.

It is the same with my wife, who keeps a diary from which she draws her daily thoughts. She has kept it twenty-five years, and it has been for her a great comfort.

Dear diary, it's been four years since I last shared anything with you. I thought I had it all figured out and that I didn't need a diary anymore. I was wrong.

I was getting tired of being alone, and I was getting fed up with the idea of having to write about the way I felt, and I figured that maybe I could keep it a secret.

"I'm not sure what I'm doing with my life these days," I thought. "I don't think I'll ever be able to write it down."

My father, who was a highly regarded physician, had once told me that he wished he could write down all his experiences with patients and patients would write down everything he saw.

I was glad to see that he was right.

I was starting to get sick of the way I felt when I was away from home. It was the most comfortable and peaceful time of my life, but my feelings were still so raw.

It seemed that we all had the same feelings. In fact, we all were very often in the same place.

The doctor had once said to me, "You are an inner thinker, Mr. D. Clark, and probably your feelings have been affected by the experience you have had as a doctor."

I had a good sense of how it was possible for me to become an objective observer. I had been so well trained that I had no trouble in trying to understand why people behaved the way they did.