By Robert C. Koehler
I want to address the global prezmo – my word for “present moment” – but, oh God, my knee gave out the other day. I fell on the floor. I survived. I’m OK. Things happen. But I’m still in the process of trying to empty and sell my house of 40 years . . . and move out of Chicago. All this is so much bigger than I am.
Welcome to Wobblesoul. Let me open my inner life, a.k.a., my journal, for a moment and invite you in. So much of the world is in a state of hellish chaos, but war, starvation, and death are not abstractions. While my journal is “personal” – it’s about me – I feel that it’s also part of collective humanity. Truth emerges from our inner voices.
I’ve been keeping a journal, on and off, for most of my life, beginning when I was 16. We had read The Diary of Anne Frank in 10th-grade English class and I was so taken by it I knew I had to put my soul into words as well.
I spent a year starting journals and abandoning them, but then one day – in the wake of a solid geometry test I feared I’d failed – I wrote: “God, I’m worried. Scared to death is more like it.” And I let my feelings flow, giving them full reign over my words. I didn’t try to impress myself with my brilliance. I simply spilled the frustrating reality I was experiencing – my shyness, my awkward dancing, my go-nowhere crush on a girl. Yes, it was private, but the irony of journaling is that it’s written in words that are, for the most part, public. So our private emotions – no matter how alone we feel with them – take on a collective shape. They transcend us, whether we share them or not.
As I say, welcome to Wobblesoul. That’s merely the name on the cover of my current journal notebook, also known as Volume 185, but the name feels appropriate to describe all the private longing, fear and anger I’ve let loose in notebooks going back to age 16, (Yikes, I just turned 79.) My hope is that I can somehow open this lifelong dialogue with my uncertain soul and turn loose some of it beyond those pages, and maybe in so doing contribute a miniscule insight or two to humanity’s collective self-awareness.
I do so in the name of those who never had a chance to fully be themselves, thanks to war or poverty or simply illness . . . thanks to fate’s sometimes cruel indifference. We all possess the same humanity. What we “make” of ourselves from that humanity is what we publicly acknowledge and celebrate, but our doubts and lostness, our self-declared failures, our aches and wounds and foolish mistakes are also who we are – not uniquely but collectively.
Let me share another one of my invented journal-words: Sneeb! Note: the exclamation point seems to be psychologically attached to the word. And, if necessary, the presence of the letter “e” can be increased exponentially.
The word is an ironic cry of distress. Let’s say I can’t think of a certain actor’s name or remember the meaning of a word. Or the bottle of root beer I started isn’t in the fridge, where I thought I’d put it. Or maybe I’m out of bananas. The frustration I feel fully occupies me in the moment, and I’m also aware the frustration is trivial. Screaming the word, either silently or out loud, allows me both to release and laugh at the stress I feel. “Sne-e-e-e-b!”
Of course, my journaling over the years has dealt with far more significant matters as well, both joyous and soul-shattering, from the birth of my daughter to the cancer diagnosis and ultimate death of my wife. But for now, my focus is on the ho-hum ordinary, by which I mean daily life, which isn’t ordinary at all . . . not when you see it beyond the dismissive context of the prezmo.
This is what I keep realizing right now, as I continue going through – packing up, tossing out – fragment after fragment after fragment of my past, as I try to get the house empty and sellable, Frustrating as the “go through” process is (sneeb!), my journal helps me conceptualize it. Indeed, the journal serves marvelously as a scrapbook – a place to turn random stuff into sacred communication between past and present.
I come upon the memorial from Dad’s funeral, for instance. He died the day before I turned 25. My God, that was 54 years ago. And then I find an old notepad, which lists the names of the pallbearers (including me). On another page, Mom has a list of “funeral food” . . . people, listed by name, bringing sweet rolls, cake, ham, salad, casserole. My awe is almost uncontainable. I paste it in.
And then on the next page of the journal, I start what I call a “love collage” – love messages, pictures of newborns, Merry Christmas cards, wedding congratulations. There are boxes full of them. “Happy birthday, Dad. I love you so much!” My heart melts, then flows into the greater universe.
This is where we all are.
Robert Koehler (koehlercw@gmail.com), syndicated by PeaceVoice, is a Chicago award-winning journalist and editor. He is the author of Courage Grows Strong at the Wound, and his album of recorded poetry and art work, Soul Fragments.
