The Years in Review

I’ve been keeping paper journals since I was about eleven years old, about twenty-five years or so. I’ve been keeping an online journal for seven--no, eight years. The Tokyo Rosa incarnation of my online self begins, as you can see, in 2005.

If you’re good at math, you will have noticed that 2005 to 2008 is only three years and maybe you’re wondering about the missing five years. To which I offer: I have an older online journal, more anonymous than this one. (On it, I have never used my real name and anyone I wrote about also had a nickname or pseudonym. On the rare occasions I look back at the archives of that journal, very occasionally I can’t for the life of me work out who I was talking about, so obscuring are the nicknames, so consciously few the identifying characteristics.) I don’t update that blog regularly anymore (every once in a while I still add an entry) but it spans an eight year period and overlaps this blog by three years.

As a result of onling journaling, I have an easily searchable database of my life over the last eight years, so I can look back at former me and see what was going through my own head at a specific time or a specific date in an earlier year. Sometimes doing this leads me to identify seasonal patterns that are a bit mystifying even though they’re my very own.

For example, a couple of days ago I was overcome with the urge to see Casablanca again so I went out and bought a copy and watched it and then blogged about it. Just now, I looked back in this blog at the early January 2005 archives and found an entry called, “You Must Remember This.” I wasn’t writing then about the movie Casablanca then, but if you are familiar with the film you will recognize the title of the entry as being the first line from the song, “As Time Goes By” (You must remember this/ A kiss is still a kiss/ A sigh is just a sigh/ The fundamental things apply/ As time goes by), a song which plays a central, memory--provoking role in the movie. So some part of The Brain connects early January with Casablanca, but I have no idea why and The Brain just shrugs when I ask.

Another example of one of these mystifying seasonal patterns is a January-provoked affinity for the sons of Mother Russia. Four years ago in January, I was as enthralled with my Russian calculus instructor as I am this January with Anatoli Boukreev, the long-deceased Russian mountaineer I’ve written about previously. Four years ago, a friend of mine, who was then in graduate school and working in a lab with a Russian scientist, had, unbeknownst to me but on my behalf, gone straight to her Russian colleague and posed the question: “How does an American woman approach a Russian man?” I was speechless when she told me she had asked him this and I don’t remember his response. It’s entirely likely that it was something entirely untenable like, “Just be yourself.”

The Brain was amused by my unearthing this forgotten anecdote, but had only this to offer when asked for an explanation of the seasonal Russophilia:

Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

And I was, like, is that the best you can do? Fyodor Dostoyevky?

Almost seventeen years ago I had my first introduction to Fyodor Dostoyevsky via Notes from Underground. I don’t remember if I first read it in January, but something about its dark and bitter tone seems to suggest to The Brain that perhaps it would be prudent to maintain the link between the Russians and the dark, bitter month of January.

And maybe it's all linked to this, too: From looking back in my online journals, I can see that, year after year, as winter begins its descent, I too begin a descent. The winter descent is largely characterized by the feeling that I’ve lost the thread that allows me some insight into the dream that is my waking life. Sometimes, as was the case two years ago, I can find it again--or at least hang on through the darkness by reminding myself that it is there, even when I can’t see it. Sometimes, as was the case last year, the trail goes completely cold and, when thinking back to that time, I feel as though then I had only the vaguest sense of self awareness despite an almost continuous inward focus.

Just now I ran off to check the other more anonymous blog and found that in January of 2001, I was writing about being exhausted and unable to sleep. I was writing about my confusion over whether I was really qualified to judge whether what I was feeing was real depression or just the long-cultivated habits of depression. A year later, in January of 2002, I was taking antidepressants and felt blanked out. In January 2003, I was sitting in the science and engineering library wondering how I was going to make it through another day, much less an entire lifetime.

See a pattern yet? Yeah, me too. And, like me, you're probably wondering how helpful is it to know this stuff. Well, in term of pure entertainment value it's not exactly gold, but The Brain thinks the story about the Russian scientist is kind of amusing anyway.

And that Casablanca thing? Huh.