Incomplete Thoughts Interrupted: Journaling on My Birthday After Not Writing a Thing for Almost Two Whole Weeks

April 1, 2015

I am 44 years old today and feeling bad that I spent $12 on some chocolate only to discover that one of the ingredients is shellac.

Likewise, this journal which I purchased to record thoughts and drawings of our California trip (which I haven't been doing) has paper that causes the pen to bleed.  So it goes.  We are bred to be dissatisfied with our purchases, enticing us to buy more.

We are at the mall to get our son's iPod fixed.  I've
been noticing, here in L.A. that I feel left out and certainly very old, like my mother, an old lady left out because I don't have a phone, and everyone everywhere is on their phones and it all seems so desperately important.

If I lived in a big city I would certainly have to have a phone.

It's been ages since I have kept a journal.  I used to be obsessive about it.  I used to pull out my journal and pen at every spare moment and force myself to write.  It doesn't seem so important after noticing that my thoughts and observations are mundane and repetitive, as if there is a finite amount of observations a person is allotted and I have used mine all up.

To celebrate, I bought myself a book at a fancy little gift shop in the arts district in downtown L.A., a book of drawings by a man who makes observations about shapes and lines, a gift to become reacquainted with, the sinking into this process even if it is mundane, a way to return to a daily practice.

The slick and sterile mall exhausts me.  Now my flow is interrupted.  In Los Angeles, life is permeated with the knowledge that up in the hills live the gods, in ever more fantastical mansions. We come from all over the world to try to catch a single glimpse. How strangely we behave.

photos of street art

downtown L.A. arts district

cover of the book I bought myself for my 44th birthday