The Woman of 1000 Journals

Soon into tracking her journals, Ariana was known to make people guess what number journal she was working on. Five years from when she first started, she was on number 67 (so close…). When she first told me, my only response was “prolific.” 

Now having read through them, they are not what I predicted.

I expected a reflection of her vibrant self, but I found anxious ruminations instead. Her journals ended up being the places she could yell and rave and rant about her family, friends, and society at large. They were where resentment went to fester. Yet, it seems that this was her process to attempt to grow out of them (not sure it was always successful), since she consistently advised others that when they had a thought stuck and circling in their head with no respite, to take pen to paper and write it down so they can move onto the next thought. She insisted on writing it out until the time felt complete. It seems the only peace she had was when she had a pen in hand and a scrap of paper to deposit her brain and feelings and soul and heart into.

Always a woman of strong opinions, her journals also reflect how she would get tangled up in her own ideas, trying to get to the bigger picture, the bigger tapestry of prejudice and injustice in the world, including: capitalism, sexism, classism, homophobia, biphobia, ableism, etc. Ironically, there is almost nothing about the news or world conflicts in her journals. There was some history to support her arguments.

But alongside her personal and sociocultural rantings, there is her poetry and “fiction.” Her fictional work ended up being too self-emulating in the eyes of her critics, and even some of her admirers, but what author hasn’t committed this sin? Her poetry consisted of many love poems for people she paradoxically wrote (right before or after the poem) “didn’t deserve it.” Since she asked me to make her journals public domain (which exposes them to AI use, but she barely decided that was worth the sacrifice*), you may read and judge them for yourself. You and I get to read the first (which also were usually the final) drafts of her poetry. You can taste the influences of Sandra Cisneros, Alma Lopez, Ana Castillo, Ada Limon, Paula Allen Gunn, and later Tamsyn Muir (less successfully pulled off).

Yet, I don’t know how much her writing truly captures her. It doesn’t capture her loyalty and ferocity of love to the point of being overwhelming and suffocating (honestly, frequently). Even with her journals out in the world, I don’t know how much we can know about the true nature of her relationships and interactions - only her reflections. She rarely wrote what she was happy about; what she found joyful. I guess that’s what her blog was for. Her journals open a new avenue into her brain, and not the most flattering one. She could be obsessive in her infatuations. I believe she knew she was ridiculous and purposefully hid them, even now (or especially now) that she is not here to defend herself. She seems to have held back on some things because she purposefully wanted others to read this. She always cared too much what others thought about her, and her vanity decided to carry that into death.

There are times when she is holding back, and others where she just stops. When she didn’t love someone anymore, and she felt there was nothing new the relationship could teach her, the person ceases to exist in her writing. She seems to find satisfying (and arguably petty) power in what she could publish about others. She validated herself in doing so. Because she knew she was extinguishing the presence of others in her writing, she encouraged everyone to write, to put their own stamp on the world. (“If you don’t write yourself into the world, that’s your own damn fault” - journal 87)

As someone who edited/published anthologies, she thought I was qualified and asked me to be the one to write this. I believe others will listen to critics who are (allegedly) better experienced in critiquing others. However, she wanted it to be from me, her brother, to better understand her, and the one to be able to give her the forgiveness she needed. I will find the forgiveness she is asking for, perhaps more easily than she imagined.

I love you, I miss you, and may your words haunt the Internet and libraries as long as they exist, and may someone who never knew you find comfort in your work.

Con todo mi amor,

Tu hermano 

~~

*An avid critic of AI, she strove to never use it, and never admitted to doing so. To be fair, all of her writing was in fact homegrown in the (over)flourishing garden of her brain, but maybe she used it when she searched for answers on the Internet. Maybe I should have titled this the woman of 1000 tabs – she was voracious in her curiosity and lacked follow through until her semi-annual purge of tabs to just save into her bookmarks, rarely to be seen again.