You can't take it with you.

Last thing at night I keep a day-to-date diary. A simple, pretty boring to read account, partly kept up; as i don't want to break a several decades old chain, and partly, for a too long to explain here reason, for alibis.

For a long time before computers, I also kept numerous journals on the go, Moleskines. Some still live in boxes in the attic, a couple though, important ones, that had been on many of my early travels, were mislaid and lost to me, many moons ago, in a West country town when I was backpacking some Cornish coastal paths. And although it may not be a big deal in the large scheme of things, as the saying goes, I think I know what Mr. Irwin felt when he pulled that stingray's barb from his heart.

But the past is just that, right? Yes, it's alive and no, it's dead. Sometimes it still does bother me where they might have ended up. Maybe a bunch of 20 something's howled with laughter and Stellas around some fire on a beach, taking turns to read and clown parts of one of the books. Or maybe some stable hand puzzled over starfish sketches I did of African cities at night from a plane descending into Mombassa. Perhaps some suicidal schoolgirl cutting class curled up on a bed, forgotten and alone, reading about that time on that bunk in Inverness when I wasn't feeling so hot. And maybe a word or line will save her at least till dinner.

But who am I kidding? They probably met a quick and quiet dispatch at the bottom of some dumpster, noticed as much, as a fish does a bicycle thrown into a river.

So maybe I subconsciously created this blog so I could communicate with those someone else's, so I can write these posts, which will likely be viewed as much as what those books were recycled into – maybe pencils to write more pencil material. A rolling space, kept, not so much for display but to feel in touch with people, the tribe so to speak, kind of like the ham radio set that Mark’s parents in the film, “Pump Up The Volume” give him to talk with his friends back East though he discovers he can’t reach them so he does this pirate radio broadcast to no one and nowhere special every night from his basement. I remember being taken with the idea, it’s kind of a cool thought to broadcast whatever you want, whenever you want however you wish, to no one or anyone wherever they may be. Or like setting a net down somewhere in a stream where fish, or something, can swim through.

I never kept a log as such back then – just a private journal and always with me in wind and rain, writing in cars, buses, planes, trains, kitchens, trolleys, gardens, lawns, tents, standing and sitting, restaurants and cafes, street corners, barber shops, malls, escalators and stairs and elevators, parks, beaches, boats, theatres, schools – the various books carried and represented every place that I'd been, seen, every thought and feeling I've felt and person I've known in those years even if not captured, a record of those years careening like a rickshaw through a Delhi night – a symbol of the moments, not of what anything could've been but just what it was, paper outside the head, of all that did happen, to ground you in times when you questioned whether all the faces, the pursuits, place and encounters and occurrences were true.

That they all must have meant something (and connected to something) but you never quite figured it out, right? And not that you ever really open the books these days, but that simply their presence holds a hope and reassurance that, yes, it all really did happen and that perhaps they gave the appearance of raw material that could someday in someway give or hint at the answer, an answer, the one people whether they know it or not are always trying to find ( if indeed there is one ) as to what it’s all about. Or in the least something for that girl curled up on that bed… To give that feeling like, okay, it’s all here and sure the journal, blog, and whatnot are going back into the river but at least what you now have is something that makes that all not seem to matter too much, at least now.

So I'm convincing myself that it is really all inside of me. Perhaps the journal pulls at that part of you that needs to get it out and perhaps the blog pulls at that part of you to write while knowing that, gosh, theoretically, any one could pop in at anytime though maybe no one, like my lost journals – so perhaps it’s all ultimately really in the doing.

Back to the beach boys, the stable hand, and the forgotten girl – I'd like to believe that the journals could have helped or bettered someone, but it was my life really – gone, and here again – I see what matters, what remains, and that you can't take it with you.