[October 30th actually took up the span of three full days in the year 2004. Some say it was because of the lunar eclipse. So don't be confused by this entry as many have been.]

The Transcendence Diaries were an experiment in the ongoing saga of The Adventures of Fishy. Not being able to complete the work, or better put, not even being able to make sense of it, I decided to abandon it all together and just start keeping a daily journal. Both factual and fictitious certainly. Thoughts, events, ideas, feelings, stories and fantasies, expurgations and exploits alike. It was much easier to journal everyday than it was to pen a novel. And I being a very lazy person thought the idea a brilliant one. At least for the benefit of my own sanity, but perhaps unfortunately not for the old bank account. I thought that going back to journal writing might help me one day prepare for novel writing. They were a therapy perhaps even more. Having been estranged from the lovely and mysterious Cleopatra at that point for close to a year, I needed something to fall in love with. Why not myself. I needed something to feed and water and care for. And the daily habit of diary keeping was just that thing.

They were started on July 12th, in the year 2002. not any different than the thousands of pages I had already penned as a young teenager and college student before I got the notion that I would turn it all into a novel one day. that idea and my many attempts at it so destroyed the journals completely that I soon started detesting the idea of writing. And for years I never even opened a book to jot down a word. Out of necessity really I began again simply and soon found my self so addicted to the process that I never travel anywhere now without my laptop and never find a quiet moment in the old noggin when there isn’t a narrator deep in the recesses of my mind recalling and retelling and reshaping every moment that I breathe, everything that I witness or observe, every thought, feeling, action, or event is narrated for me as if by some mysterious and unknown third party that dwells somewhere within my skull without me actually ever doing a thing. I just listen; attentively sometimes; except when I am trying to sleep; and I try my best to write a little bit of it down every night before I go to bed.

Although they are regularly posted to the Internet every few days a few pages at a time, they are actually kept in one-hundred page word documents to keep the file sizes manageable on my hard drive and a few external back up drives. Regardless of the date, each chapter is closed after a hundred pages have been typed. This evening I closed the ninth chapter to begin the 10th. That makes for an approximate count of 900 pages. [After a quick survey of each I found the actual count to be 944 pages to be exact.] Today's date is October 30th, 2004. Two years and three months later and 944 pages typed in. Not bad kid. Not bad at all. Especially since I don't take it seriously and don't even spend much time doing it. for the most part I had long considered it an almost fruitless exercise that I had created simply because I was too lazy to be a real writer. I had always compared diary keepers to part-time musicians who never bother to write complete songs or record albums. Hobbyists at best. Most of the time just nuisances.

But the project has not been without its benefits. I do derive an immense pleasure from the practice for some reason. I think partly because it affords me something to do with my mind. I have from what I can tell an certifiably insane mind. I was born with it. always had it since I could remember. Since I was a baby I could always hear this other voice inside my head speaking to me; no, not speaking to me. speaking to itself. While I listened. ‘so this is the nice woman. this is the mean man. This is my grandfather. He is the father of the nice woman. she is my mother. That is her mother over there. she does the cooking. She is the wife of the grandfather. He sits around and tells everyone else what to do. how long have I been here? who am I? how did I end up here? with them? who are these people? what if there were nothing in this world? what would the world be like if there was no world? would I still be in this world? is there another world besides this world? what world did I originally come from?’

These are my earliest memories of my earliest thoughts. Before I could walk or speak or communicate with the outside world of the giants all around me. I would close my eyes for minutes at a time and try to imagine a world where there was no world in it, or try to picture the world from which I came. For I knew that one day I was not here, and the next thing I knew, I was here. this I knew. The other voice in my head always thinking, calculating, analyzing. And me just following along for the ride.

I ask other people do you have this voice in your head that is always narrating everything and commenting on everything and cataloging everything and judging everything? and most often than not they say no and that I should seek medical treatment. So I think the diaries are that medical treatment. It’s the way I ward off the insanity that would surely come from someone living with this day in and day out without any rest from it like I do. so I write it all out instead. I think that's the truest thing I've ever written in my life.
And while we’re on truth, that was another entirely unexpected benefit from the Transcendence Diaries. I began to tell the truth. I began to feel the truth. And be o.k. with the truth. For the first time in my life. I couldn’t hide from the truth anymore because I wasn't just living and forgetting anymore. I was writing it all down. And it was very obvious to me once I got the words on paper when I was lying and when I was telling the truth. and most of the time when I first began the experiment I was lying. Not out of any malicious intent but more just from habit. Just from the habit of not being able to, not knowing how to, relay the truth as it really is.

I could feel a certain sick sensation in me when I would write something that didn't ring a hundred percent true. and I could feel a real sense of pride and liberation and joy when I occasionally wrote something that was true. really rang true. I felt lighter, rather than heavier.

I believe that that started on my first trip to Italy to research my family. It was the first time that I remember consciously forcing myself to try to write the truth, no matter how difficult or painful it may have been. And it was at first most of the time. it still is sometimes, but not often. Now I find it much easier. And deeply fulfilling. If not a bit challenging still sometimes.

Everyone wants to be something they are not. Me more than anyone. I can assure any man of that. and that is where truth telling really becomes a battle between the being and the imagined being. It is as much due to our judgments of others and the judgments we assume they are making of us as it is to our own inner-longing to be better and more than how we are judging ourselves to be in every moment of our waking life. Love yourself and you will find truth. Accept yourself and you find even more truth. Love and accept the world around you and you will the truth.

I just made that up of course and have no idea if it is true. But it sounds nice anyway.

So two years into this and I found that I was finally able to write the truth most of the time for the first time in my entire life. and through that I found that I started thinking and speaking the truth in my day to day life. for the first time ever. Truly. And that is a truly joyous and miraculous thing. it is the reason for the glow in my countenance and the kick in my step and the smile I walk around sharing so freely with the rest of the world, as some suspiciously look upon me with watchful eyes. but I cannot help it. the truth indeed sets you free.

As if this weren't enough, the most miraculous thing I may have come to derive from the Transcendence Diaries is the realization that I may in the process of it all have become a writer. Before closing chapter nine tonight I read a few of the pages and felt a certain satisfaction that indeed perhaps through the exercise I had finally become a real writer and not just a scribbler. Not a good writer of course. But a writer nonetheless of some kind. and this wasn't the first time. there have been a few other such occasions over the last six months that I have been struck by a similar feeling. I have at the least found a voice of some kind.

Now whether this bodes well for the actual novel itself, the original Adventures of Fishy manuscript, I do not know. What I do know is that that cursed beast still sits at well over 5000 pages long on this hard drive almost untouched. I attempted to open it and work on it a bit earlier this year and found it a maddening experience. Especially while trying to keep up with the current diaries at the same time. so again, I abandoned it.

The problem is that I wasn't a writer then; just a kid obsessively keeping journals. I hadn't found a voice or a style --- I don't pretend that I have found much of either now, but assert that I don't really need to because after all these are just journals, so who the hell cares what they read like. This is what I tell myself anyway, and that's what keeps me writing --- or at least I hadn't found a voice or a style that I can bear to tolerate now. When I read the old Fishy I usually just feel sick. I laugh at myself. I am my own television, channel, show, and audience all wrapped into one. What a clown indeed. I should just open the damn things up and get to the task of finishing them. and I am sure I will one day lest the fabled prophecy become true. Fishy dies and the boxes of manuscripts are found incomplete and unfinished and entirely without rhyme or reason. I think that would be a terrible fate. And a real injustice to how hard I have worked at trying to make sense of it all while I am here.

So as chapter ten now begins I have no idea what will come next; what adventures or dramas will unfold only future history knows. But I do know that I have found some truth. And I have found a writer’s voice. And that can be looked at as magnificent and miraculous indeed.     

Current spin: Italian lessons CDs. every morning. Trying to brush up. Don't ask me why since I begin French classes again next week. But I want to try my hand at studying two foreign languages at once. I think it will be very stimulating and I also suspect the effect to the brain could be very beneficial. It can do nothing I hope but open the caverns of the mind ever wider and deeper and may stimulate new thoughts and ideas and whole new methods of thinking by pushing the brain so beyond its normal capacity.

Last screening: DVD 1 of the Ric Burns 12 volume documentary of the history of New York City. Glorious. Brilliant.
Also Persuasion, by Jane Austen. I'm a sucker for Jane Austen right now. now that's a writer.