Old Stories Become New Paper

[qos]

I've written here before about the internal experience of my old stories no longer having the same meaning, except for the reflection of who I used to be.

Today during a serious cleaning session, I went through three notebooks of primarily hand-written fiction, some of it dating back as far as junior high. None of it had seen the light of day in several years. At first I went through it page by page, deciding which to keep and which to throw in the recycle bag. But the further I went on, the less time I spent on any one page. By the time I came to the last notebook, the one containing at least one hundred pages of handwritten episodes from my Journeys, the core myth of my youth, I was ready to simply pull them all out, knowing that I would never read them again, nor use them as inspiration for new writing. Quite literally, those chapters of my life are at an end.

I did keep a few things. _storyteller_ just asked me what those pieces said to and about me. I hadn't thought about it yet. Some are simply mostly-finished pieces that I still like, or am proud of in some way. Many, as I reflect now, are explorations of themes of sovereignty which continues to be a powerful, meaningful concept to me. So there is some continuity.

It always feels good to purge possessions, but this is the first time I've seriously purged my creative past. And I feel lighter for it.

Comments

[bodhibird.livejournal.com]

I did something very similar when we moved this summer, from a two-level apartment into a much smaller one-bedroom. I threw out most of my journals. I kept the first volume or two that I wrote, the one in which I recorded my mother's death, and volumes from the last three years. Once we moved, I regretted even keeping things from the last three years--they're sitting in a box in the floor here in the study, and there just is no place to put them. But it wasn't hard to purge those things; I was truly ready to let go.

[professor-mom.livejournal.com]

Tell me about sovereignity. Sovereignity over what? By whom?