Status Updates From What We Can Know

I use the journals mostly to remind myself of the sequence of events, in which memory is notoriously weak. The past, jumbled in the mind, survives its own special tense, a form of ahistorical present.

A journal, whatever its quality, fixes events like beads on a string.

He dominated people with his own style of reasoned kindness. There was no scheming. He did not even know he was doing it. He was logical and he cared. It was obvious to him that the one he cared for should do as he suggested.