I finished my first journal in April of two-thousand-and-six during my Sophomore year at Boston University's School of Theatre in 855 Commonwealth Ave. I started an obsession with journals and diaries in the first grade. My allowance was spent on the hope that hundreds of bounded blank pages would be the one. Thousands of trees died in vain; the average entries per diary was a generous three. In fourth grade, after two or three years in to my Holocaust phase and reading the Diary of Anne Frank; Abridged, I read the night's attempt in a pink small sized lined leather diary with a tiny key with a heart shaped keyhole strung in a ribbon of thin darker pink satin and tossed it in the trash.
A completely rational ten year old, I felt it to be delusional to write down the accounts of my upper middle class existence in North West Washington, D.C.
Why kid myself?
I pitied my fellow classmates in Ms. Johnson's second grade class as they shared their career plans for their adult future.
"Baseball player!"
FCC Lawyer
"Movie Star!"
Journalist, USA Today
"Rock Star!"
Speech Writer, Democrat
"James Bond!"
Speech Writer, Republican
"Ballerina"
Binger/Purger/Cocaine
"I want to be a pathologist."
"What is that Lizzie?"
"The person who cuts up dead people to see how they died." I answered wearing a pink cotton turtleneck dress with pockets in the shape of hearts in white wool tights and my black patent leather mary janes. Too naive to be aware of the irony... yet.
These wishful dreamers also finished diaries without panic attacks and anxiety. They did not concern themselves with style, labeling, print or cursive, topic, mood, the routine of morning or noon or moon, pen ink. Not even the DESIGN OF THE JOURNAL itself. They wrote the god damn entry documenting their day upon day upon day until they finished the diary or grew bored half way through.
I couldn't bear the humiliation of future generations finding my thoughts worth writing down for evidence of my place in the story of man kind limited to my crushes on safe nice white boys lacking mystery, danger, or balls (literal and metaphorical) and my promises of epic passion to finish this one.
Future generations will find no trace of my evidence in written account from my own free will.
Anne Frank had something to write about.
In the summer of nineteen-ninety-nine my family visited London followed by Amsterdam for two weeks. Every day while my father was lecturing; Mommy, Birdy, and I went sightseeing by foot to Art museums, sites of noted history, well known bookstores listed as literary hot spots, and many cafes in between for culture digestion. In the evening, after Dad finished for the day, we would all attend dinner followed by a musical in the West End.
Birdy and I always wore lovely dresses for what the occasion demanded. The only traces of my American heritage were my nails in chipped polish in the bright shade of white. Until I aged to sixteen and a few months, I never understood the concept of painting your finger nails in anything but white. Didn't white match with everything? Did no female in history catch on to this practical shade? We adored the European Cartoon Network, and I did impressions to make her laugh in all our waking hours.
That trip, in hindsight, is an unlikely combination of my girlhoods passions. London offered the home of Queen Elizabeth I, my favorite historical heroine, and the medical battlegrounds of the victims of the Black plague. Then I would complete the trip by spending a week in the city where Anne Frank had to go in to hiding in the infamous annex; which Nazi soldiers dragged her to the concentration camp where she would die of disease days before the survivors would find liberation at the ending of World War Two.
Unimaginable pain, cruelty, and vulgarity were the themes of my early interests. The first time I read Anne's diary it didn't make much of an impression to my at age nine. My preference was for the survivor's stories. Those who saw the deaths of their families one by one, came of age in torture for the goal of the eventual extinction of their heritage.
Don't spare me the details. I want to know all.
How else would I know about human suffering? How else would I be reminded to be thankful for my boring existence filled with love, learning, and responsible parents guiding my through my chick years in our beautifully decorated home with bed time stories every night and time outs if we misbehaved; but always ended in deeply emotional apologies complete with tears and promises to never ever ever never ever be bad again. No matter how rebellious I felt on any given matter; it never felt worth it for too long if it meant going against my genius Mother. A woman whose intelligence, courage, and no tolerance for bull shit is confirmed as magical after you realize she can knit you one of museum quality while baking handmade chocolate chip cookies in the dozens while finding two house cats accidently let out by her husband or two daughters.
Arenda Jane Holladay does not forget to shut the door all the way.
Arenda Jane Holladay does not forget.
Arenda Jane Holladay broke a man's legs by throwing a metal pipe she found in a deserted construction site after being followed on foot, bus, and foot by the rapist of over thirty women; which the cops discovered after blaming the young woman for her initiative. She said they gave her more trouble then her victim.
Arenda Jane Holladay does not need to mention this to anyone she meets.
She does not forget, but sets an example for those who feel the need to divulge their painful life history forgetting their audience by their wiser choice to spare us the details in personal conversation.
It's ill mannered and offensive to discuss your personal sex life, religion and spirituality, and political stances. If you are lucky enough to experience every opinion and belief, without the influence of appeasing other's opinions, and reach the nirvana of accepting the discouraging fact that no one is right in their belief and boiled down they all pretty much are the same anyways only differing in the selfish height a person can convince themselves their chosen view is absolutely impossibly wrong. Like Hitler. Or abortion clinic terrorists. And vegans who smoke a pack-per-day.
I don't have opinions. I can't make judgements. I tell-it-how-it-is; which involves observation then regurgitation.
Occasionally, I get side tracked. I'm not forcing my conservative liberalism or liberal conservatism or Jews-For-Jesus or Americans-for-going-against-the-founding-father's-wishes-for-the-benefit-of-the-future-nation-they-so-valiantly-fought-for-the-free-worlds-independence-in-a-democracy-without-party-representation?
This entry requires not the need of structure and argument to convince you to believe what I write.
That's probably why I've yet to generate a reader base. Who could blame my absent audience?
I hate being talked at too, but I love reading novels. As well as watching interviews.
A few individuals in the history of the recorded human race are interesting, intelligent, and inspirational to talk at and be listened back.
Bob Dylan or Joan of Arc.
You listen to their words out of need; which needs to be mentioned because I must confess the sick entertainment I get out of being talked at by idiots who think they are Bob Dylan or Joan of Arc.
Why do you think reality television is such a sick addiction, and additionally being a wonderful source of current anthropological data on various cultures of the great thinking species. Once the offer of a reality television program documenting my existence, around the Thanksgiving holiday in two-thousand-and-six, fell in to my list of my refused could-have-made-it chances.
Apparently, I'm not as self destructive as we all thought. As if I would allow cameras to follow me around capturing footage to be cut together by a producer trying to find a story line in a non-fictional character.
Not until the day I avoid using "like" in spoken or typed conversations or monologues. There is hope my soliloquies and inner thoughts don't need the cripple of vague descriptions.
Thank You Nora Ephrom. From the bottom of my generation's heart representing all females who watched Clueless before puberty. Don't worry, Sex and The City made us whores. Cher just made us want to appear and sound like idiots.
With heart.
Like any generation could boast more attractive females. It's hard to worry if it take two hours to straighten our locks to glossy spaghetti without the fullness of Medusa's snakes. I turn to stone faster when looking at the former.
I don't make enough money to afford pulling of the hooker look yet. You make it when you get to homeless hooker status. I find the empty streets more homey then magnificent blobs of giant a la mansion du jour decorated by a stranger whose taste you trust more then your own. Isn't that hint number one you shouldn't be living in a 23 bedroom and 29 1/3 bath complex? You could turn it in to a beautiful foster home with the water park and tennis courts; but the heated driveways for the 3 days of snow per year could be a bit excessive for you to donate to the poor. The science of a pavement surface producing heat from the ground could be straining for their brains trying to grasp the concepts challenged to them in their basic(ally a joke) level science courses.
God, wouldn't it be glorious to be rich enough to justify whatever the fuck you needed justifying?
Money is the fastest way to shake off an existential crisis.
We visited The Annex on our first day in Amsterdam in the late morning and a group of German boys in their mid to late teens got to second base with the statue in the likeness of the thirteen year-old author who did not have the luxury as to stand outside in the same spot like her metal twin did.
I felt uncomfortable as I realized the mature understanding that nouns with deep sentiment to ones could mean a hysterical joke to others. Especially when in a group mentality.
Since we were girls, and even now as young women, every family activity (vacationing or hiking or learning or etc.) was spent with my one woman show of entertainment purely for the sake of making Birdy laugh at The Prado or Space Mountain or various spots along The Oregon Trail, and the entire country of Greece. Unless we hated eachother, which sisters frequently do and frequently forget when realizing they truly will never find a better ally or worst enemy.*
We were both to afraid to speak in The Annex as we walked through the guided tour. In the gift shop, I chose The Diary of Anne Frank; Unabridged & Unedited. I spent my final days in Amsterdam re-reading her diary as she put it, and not Children's Book Publishers. I read the diary of a thirteen year old girl, very similar to me. I knew Anne and I would have laughed at the same amusing moments together if she was walking with me. The entire diary is quite long, and I carried a book around with me always, so I was so engrossed in her words it felt hard to not imagine Anne and I were not actually together in the canal city of bicycles and the remarkably tall Dutch. I read her diary and suspended the knowledge of her tragedy post writing. It wasn't until I got to the last page, deceivingly before many pages of notes as to not prepare you for the abrupt end, that Anne and I were not the same girl dealing with the same issues and dreaming of the same secret things.
Anne was hiding from the Nazis in a hidden upstairs where she lived with her family and strangers; which included a crushable boy who found her crushable back. Stuck there. With him. For years.
My insides turned green. Anne Frank lived my dream.
What would be the point of writing a diary?
Until I at least made it out of my teens.
Yours Truly,
Lizzie
*For a few summers Katie and I decided to memorize and mimic on demand The Best of Mike Myers. She, blonde, played Garth to my, brunette, Wayne; which was by far our best performance out of the 90 minute performance. Though Katie did the most disturbing Dr. Evil impressions, always quoting the line using the word "testicles"**; but Katie Bird didn't know the definition of the word she'd drop in small diners or Route 66 to the horror of small towns eating the greatest pie/burgers/bbq/chili or whatever the special that demanded our family to test out The Greatest Steak in America in Colby, Kansas. The Greatest Steak in America is in Colby, Kansas.
**Katie passed out with her face looking right up at The David's nut sack in an Italian restaurant in Bermuda. Oddly.
