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February 8, 2006
There's Just No Competing with Buckminster Fuller
Old pal Gentry rode her bike over to the apartment last night and we drank whiskey and discussed love, travel and other topics. Rafe's gone at a conference till Friday so I get free reign of the apartment, which is a nice change of pace because for a few days there remains actual un-eaten food in the kitchen and I get to take up more than 33 percent of the bed.
So Gentry introduced me to the basic ideas behind Buckminster Fuller, a fellow she's been really getting into lately. Doing some cursory follow-up research today, I came across some random trivia about him: In addition to all his other accomplishments (which I'm too lazy to go into but rest assured he did more than design the Epcot Center), he documented his life every 15 minutes from 1915 to 1983, leaving behind 270 feet worth of journals. His is said to be the most documented human life in history.
When I think about my documented life, I think about my 20 or so journals that each contain at most 15 filled pages. I have no problem starting a journal, it's just the sticking with it that seems beyond me. After writing steadily for a few days, I inevitably skip a few days, which then turns into weeks, and
then months.. And then, when I want to start writing again, I dig up my journal and realize that the last entry I wrote was six months beforehand. And I can't write another entry in the same journal because then it would appear as though I hadn't done anything of note for all that time... and if someone were to stumble upon this journal in the future, it would be misleading and I would look boring, or so my neurotic logic goes. And so then I start fresh, as if each journal is a literal new chapter (or volume) of my life, and then eventually I repeat the cycle of journal abandonment. It's really pretty sick.
And so now I blog. I blog so that in the future, my grandkids can Google my name and find out about my sordid past and then, God bless my old soul, they will know Grandma Debbie as a person and not just as a smelly elderly person. It's all for the little ones.
Posted by debbie at February 8, 2006 3:45 PM