Christina Stind’s Reviews > Slouching Towards Bethlehem > Status Update

It is a good idea, then, to keep in touch [with one’s past selves], and I suppose that keeping in touch is what notebooks are all about. And we are all on our own when it comes to keeping those lines open to ourselves: your notebook will never help me, nor mine you.’

‘Remember what it was to be me: that is always the point.’

‘So the point of my keeping a notebook has never been, nor is it now, to have an accurate factual record of what I have been doing or thinking. That would be a different impulse entirely, an instinct for reality which I sometimes envy but do not possess.’

‘Why did I write it down? In order to remember, of course, but exactly what was it I wanted to remember? How much of it actually happened? Did any of it? Why do I keep a notebook at all? /…/ The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself.’

‘/…/ the ability to think for one's self depends upon one's mastery of the language /…/.’