Three Times Seventeen

I have this big red army-style footlocker filled with faded photographs, unpublished manuscripts, and other mementos of my youth—and, for that matter, not-so-youth, as well.

One of the items in there is my first journal, a hardbound ledger book given to me for Christmas 1973 by my first girlfriend, Wendy Bennett. I wrote in it for a couple of years, carrying it in my backpack when I hitchhiked across Canada in 1975, eventually filling it up with adolescent ruminations, until it pretty much fell apart under the weight of bad poetry when I was an aspiring actor/college student a few years later.

Today being my 51st birthday, I thought it would be illuminating—or at least horribly depressing—to look back into it to see what I was thinking 34 years ago when I was just 1/3rd as old as I now am.

I wrote, on March 27, 1974, “My birthday. I feel obligated to write, and wishful for some sparkling revelations to retain for posterity.”

And then I did, recording such brilliant nuggets as, “I want to grow my plants better. I want fifty million albums. I want to be less greedy, but get more stuff.”

Not much has changed--although I guess I would substitute “CDs” (or “downloads”) for albums.

I said, “I want to be just me, without any influences, most original and creative.” Nowadays, I don’t mind the influences, I just want to admire those from whom I poach my ideas.

I continued the entry with, “I want a lot of a million jillion things I’ll never get.” Today, I don’t feel so wracked with desire; I’m fairly content with all I have and don’t have a powerful sense of anything missing in my life—other than the Tournesol, which, I think, I’ll be riding within the month.

My final reflection that day was, “I feel better for writing this.” Three times as old right now, I feel generally the same way about these words.