(PURPOSE OF THIS JOURNAL)[26th March 1987]

[Redbook3:32-34][19870326:1543n](PURPOSE OF THIS JOURNAL)[26^th March 1987]

.1543

[continued]

The usefulness of a Journal or Notebook for me is that it provides, first, a method of expressing, more easily (for me) than in vocal speech, stray ideas and ponderings which do not come in a form or at a time appropriate for inclusion in some larger work. (The point is that thoughts etc. can to some extent be saved up for writing here or in some other book at an appropriate point, and might even benefit by further development while waiting). If these notes seem to involve ME rather excessively, it is I suppose in the nature of the game at the moment: also, I am experimenting with myself because I know more about myself. There is more than one way to write about oneself.

If there has been little social observation in general or particular it is not because I don't observe but perhaps because I don't make observations* all that much (although more than I used to): I like to think I notice things but expression is indirectly, not directly, linked with the things noticed. So far as particular social observation is concerned, about identifiable personalities, I only really enjoy the company of friends (old and new), and I should hate to write about them; I wouldn't mind writing about those who are not my friends, if I had to, only I can never remember their names.

But as a record, these Books have been extraordinarily useful in enabling me to cross-refer different ideas from different times, compare them with each other and with subsequent events, and develop them.** This outweighs the considerable embarrassment felt by one's later reading self at one's earlier writing (and for that matter at one's later writing....)

*[i.e., presumably, in the sense 'comments','notes'] <Underlining – 870331>

**[They have also turned out to have another function: a type of letter to the future writer/reader, in a way which was, I think, sometimes foreseen, at least in principle. A few days before the time of adding this note and posting this entry, the writer of this note was uploading the blog entry at [Redbook3:28-30][19870326:1543j]{Recurring Image: Death and Dismemberment}[26^th March 1987], and found it directly applicable to the difficult personal situation he found himself in then and since then; and it was, after some difficulty, so applied, and rightly so.] <20151031>

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