Writing, preserving

I’ve always liked writing and kept journals throughout my teens and early twenties. However, at some point, seemingly out of nowhere, the habit became intermittent or nonexistent. I suspect this change was due to the new pressures of adult life, less free time, and the distractions of technology. Maybe I felt like I didn’t have anything particularly thrilling to write about, as my life seemed, at the time, a bit monotonous and lonely—quite different from what one might expect of a chatty, miniskirted twenty-something living in a big city.

My interest in keeping a detailed record resurfaced strongly in the summer of 2022 when I went through a sort of binge-reading manic episode after getting my hands on Deborah Levy’s excellent memoir, Things I Don’t Want to Know. This was soon followed by The Cost of Living and, ultimately, Real Estate to complete her collection. This trilogy explores womanhood, freedom, and what seems like life and writing itself through beautifully crafted snapshots of Levy's life.

The idea that writing every day wasn’t just “a good thing to do” but borderline essential to life came back to me. It seemed impossible to create something of that calibre without years or even decades of personal material. Not that I aspire to write a memoir—I don’t think of myself as that interesting (I’m not!)—but Levy’s work made me think about how memory is oh-so-fragile and how the things I find insignificant in the present will become invaluable.

Writing about our own little lives also offers invaluable hindsight. Once out of the eye of the hurricane, things that might have been murky become clear, and that self-understanding makes us better prepared to identify situations later on. This helps us avoid tripping over the same rock twice and empathize with our past selves. We’re all just trying our best here.

It’s always striking to read months or years back and feel profound empathy for that past version of oneself, dealing with what at times felt like real heartbreak, confusion, or anger that, in the present and after the brush of time, unveils itself in reality as just a crush (on a guy with bad hair who can’t even dress), a misunderstanding, or just a week of poor sleep that made us feel agitated.

But more than instrumental teachings from my ignorant past self, the real reason I write is the act of preservation itself. Images and feelings might be subtle or too abstract to pay much attention to or understand if not put on the page—specks of dust that will be distorted or forgotten if not carefully documented.

It’s ironic how, with all the gadgets at our disposal and the infinite pictures and videos we can take, writing by hand still seems like the most accurate way to keep a proper record. There is something about the specific pressure of the pen, the way the ink flows differently depending on the day as descriptions come to life, free from the so-called objectivity of a phone camera and its failure to capture the experience of something. How the sea smells of salt, the temperature of an embrace we have longed for, or how a train ride feels pink, red, or blue.

Writing (at least for me) will probably endure as the ultimate device to capture the fleeting and invisible and to remind me that beauty is, in fact, hiding in all the delicate images of life, good and painful: breakfast on a Tuesday in May, almost fainting at Berlin airport, slicing a perfect grapefruit, losing someone, watching a stupid movie and secretly liking it, discussing politics and getting worked up outside a wine bar, walking to Parliament Hill Fields with my friend Hye, talking about baked goods and pleading with the universe to send love our way. Going on a swan-shaped boat with my sister, imagining how fun it would be if we could pedal it into the ocean and disappear, just floating.

Happy writing, everyone.