First off. Thank you to Amuirin for asking this of Robin.
Also a thank you to Robin for sharing yours with us all.
I have always been attracted to the written word. For as long as I can remember I have had a book or two or three in my hand. In January of 1997 I purchased this journal (nothing fancy) and started writing down quotations from things that I was reading. It has traveled with me and guided me through many of life’s battles and wears it’s wounds well. It’s pages are falling out and it’s cover is held in place with the weakest of glue but within it’s modest pages I can see a transformation within me. I can witness on a page those things which I was searching for knowledge in and those pieces of written beauty that I hold dear to me. Someday I hope that it finds itself in the hands of my girls and they can see what wisdom I found during the course of my life
The first thing that is written in it’s pages is from the bible. It may be the only one in there.
Be strong and of good courage, fear not nor be afraid; for the Lord they God will not fail thee nor forsake thee.
Joshua 1:9
What is strange about this quote is that I didn’t find it in the Bible. Instead I found it while reading an autobiography of member of the House of Representatives from the state that I live in where he discussed his homosexuality. I was a Freshman in college when I wrote those words in these pages and have always felt that the courage that it took for this man to write that book was amazing. These were words that carried him through his journey and so they were the words that started me on mine.
In a few pages I fall upon one of my favorite quotes. It is an excerpt from a letter that was written by the poet John Keats to Fanny Brawne
I never knew before, what such love as you have made me feel, was; I did not believe in it; Fanny I was afraid of it, lest it should burn me up. But if you will fully love me, although there may be some fire ’twill not be more than we can bear when moistened and bedewed with Pleasures . . . I love you the more that I believe you have liked me for my own sake and for nothing else. I have met with a woman whom I really think would like to be married to a Poem and to be given away by a Novel. Ever yours, My Love!
Further into the journal I find myself staring at passages from the most beautiful love story I have ever read. Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera. I have read it more than once and just reading a portion of it makes me desire to pick it up again and get lost in the glory of the story.
Together they had overcome the daily incomprehensible, the instantaneous hatred, the reciprocal nastiness and fabulous flashes of glory in the conjugal conspiracy. It was the time when they loved each other best, without hurry or excess, when both were more conscious of and grateful for their incredible victories over adversity. Life would still present them with other mortal trials, of course, but that no longer mattered: they were on the other shore.
I’m wonderfully aware of the point in my life that I became a Mother and wherein my focus changed from the passion of romantic love to the passion of maternal love when I flip a page and see this quote by Carol Dunham.
The drama of birth is over. The chord is cut, the first cry heard: A new life begun…. The Mother seeing, hearing, perhaps touching her baby – scarcely notices the world around her, let alone how much her body aches. She just participated in a miracle.
Since writing that quote down I have continued my journey through life, experiencing the pains of loss and the power of the determination of spirit. Prophetically, I suppose the last quote that I have written in there is from Octavia Butler’s novel Parable of the Sower,
We are a harvest of survivors
This is a lovely tribute to yourself as well as your quote journal.
What a wonderful way to trace the journey of you life to this point.
Something like a year ago, the esteemed David Rochester inspired me with a need to write things in a way that is somewhat like what you two have done. But, I don’t take quotes. I haven’t picked a pretty book. I’ve picked a lab book with graph paper. My purpose isn’t the same as yours either. But, one part of it is. I want my children to have a physical artifact that I have touched and in some senses made with my own hand. I want something that shows some of the things in my mind to them when my mind no longer exists and they can’t get access to it by asking. I have a few such things from my parents and the way I feel about them is one that I normally don’t feel about an object.
For no reason at all, the last little while, I’ve gone off of liking looking at photographs. I wonder if it is my new glasses.
What an amazing project. I wish I had the devotions and attention span to keep such a record. As Robin said, a wonderful tribute.