These journal entries comprise two volumes of selections
(1973-1982, 1982-1988). Volume I includes an Introduction and some
biographical memories. As Stephane Mallarme considered literature
the antithesis of journalism, a journal is often the antithesis of
a diary. It is of less interest to record moods and events, or
barriers to self-realization, than to have ideas and insights about
these. As a journal-keeper, I am generally disinterested in diurnal
details, unless these form the compost of deeper exploration or
revelation, seeking insight into my condition, not simply its
description. A journal, therefore, is often more complex and
difficult than a diary, far less personal in depictions of daily
fortune, using everyday experiences as a stepstool (at the least)
to peer beyond the walls of psychological enclosure. I did not
choose the journal form to mask the personal, to belittle or avoid
it, but to reflect my most intimate assessment of the personal as
contributing to something greater: comprehension. It is not enough
merely to record the frustrations, joys or barriers of living,
without appraising these for what they represent and suggest, where
we learn not merely reiterate. The ideal criteria of selection and
discrimination apply not only to one's journal, but to life as
well, adding a mythological drama and perspective that immersion
alone does not permit. In some ways, journalizing is similar in
impulse to the pastoral ethos or motif familiar in contemplative
writing from Virgil to Thoreau: one withdraws from active society,
toward natural or rural settings, in search of some form of
respite, then returns to tell of their discoveries. Some critics
have seen this as the organizing design of most North American
fables--in fact, as the American mythology, seeking to heal the
serious schism between our natural psyche and its more devastated
environment; that is, a search for a middle ground (or via media)
between the primitive and the technologically complex. This volume
of journal selections resembles that motif, focusing on the
withdrawal phase of a generally recuperative metaphysical cycle.
Such solitude is intentional, a critical phase in the
live/withdraw/live-again cycle of spiritual refreshment. A
recuperative isolation can be experienced daily, if one is
discriminating in how their time is spent, but is usually gained
more intensely over long, purposefully reclusive periods. The
motivations for my withdrawal were several, perhaps the strongest a
propensity (as described of another Irish writer) for being nearly
overcome by the variety of life. If not overcome, certainly
fatigued by events in and of themselves. A reflective silence
seemed essential to examine the roots of this propensity. An ideal
of pure time, free of most distractions (human or otherwise), was
also necessary for writing of the sort that interested me, the
personally contemplative or mystical. Only through such reflection
could I ever achieve a meaningful connection with the more active
life that surrounded me. The predominant experience of
solitude--especially in a society where the value of withdrawal is
suspect or sporadic--is the figurative isolation one experiences
throughout the entire cycle of withdrawal and re-emergence. It is
generally difficult for lovers of action to comprehend this
attraction to non-doing. One of the aims of solitude is to reunite
philosophy and religion, or rather philosophy and awe, to not
accept the social impoverishment of these universal needs for
knowledge and worship. The asceticism of retreat was not solely the
traditional and philosophical appeal of simplicity, but the freedom
from income-producing and time-consuming work it permitted. For the
solitary, however, an ideal of pure time must be united with an
ideal of intimate association, if the mystical quest is to be
emotionally as well as spiritually and intellectually fulfilling.
This search for integrality encompasses the richness o
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