I began journaling around the age of thirteen after receiving a lined journal with lock and key for Christmas. Perhaps I took journaling as seriously as I did because I’d read The Diary of Anne Frank (begun when she was thirteen) and seen firsthand her hiding place in Amsterdam. Perhaps I was equally imprisoned by the loneliness and isolation that pervaded my life when my atheist father took a job in the Bible belt. Whatever the cause, I began journaling with a vengeance, and before the ink of my first entry dried my journal had become my best friend. To this day, it is my constant companion, there to share my appreciation for a bon mot, to help relieve a spell of boredom, to give solace when I’ve been ill treated, and to witness the profundity of my observations and ideas. (And it’s all done so brilliantly! It’s like watching myself bleed ever changing masterpieces.)
In 1979, I was in my early twenties, and being new to New York, I wrote about all the strange and wonderful things I saw there—the museum exhibits, modern-dance performances, black-box theatre plays, old movies. I wrote about what I was learning at Parsons School of Design, the students, the professors, and my projects. Here’s an excerpt from my novel, Boob: A Story of Sex, Cancer & Stupidity, which I adapted from my journal:
During my first year at Parsons School of Design, we all took school very seriously, as if our lives were at stake. This was reinforced by the professors who frequently regaled us with tales of “The Real World” we would encounter after we left Parsons. When we were given an assignment to alter our physical selves in such a way that our mental selves were altered as well, I chose to be blind for twenty-four hours. I wrapped an Ace bandage around my head to prevent inadvertent cheating. I didn’t worry what people thought of a person walking around looking like the Invisible Man, perhaps because it was for Art, but more probably because, being blind, I was oblivious to the stares I elicited.
I asked my best friend Nick, a gay guy who was more handsome and virile than any of the straight male students, to escort me to and from school.
“Sure, doll,” he said.
Walking down Fifth Avenue, just before we got to the park, Nick said, “Hold on a minute. There’s a hot guy I’ve got to meet.” (Nick liked to scour the life drawing classes for well-hung male models and then drag me to the doorway to share his finds.)
I stood on the curb for the longest while. Nick wouldn’t abandon me, would he? Finally, I lifted up the Ace bandage so that I could take a peek. There he was! Exchanging numbers with a guy on the next block. I sidled over to a building so I would be out of the way and then restored the Ace bandage to its blindfold function. Thank goodness my project was not ruined! I did a painting of a woman with no appendages who was swaddled in Ace bandages and being dragged along while sparks flew out of her brain, and got an “A.”
I put myself through Parsons by bartending so bars became my home away from home. I wrote in bars because I wanted the company without the entanglements. My entries at that time are peppered with diatribes about how obtuse some guys could be when they chose to interrupt this vital endeavor—I mean couldn’t they see I was writing in my journal? There I’d be, scribbling up a storm—(I’ve always been a steam-engine journal writer—full speed ahead—no pensive dabbling for me)—and they’d ask without fail, “Are you writing in your journal?” A bartender with whom I’d had a failed romance provided me with a witty comeback, “No, I’m just trying to see if this pen works.”
In my early thirties, still writing in New York bars, I began to bewail the lack of men in my life. My excruciating analyses of why the latest man had dumped me were punctuated with Disney-esque descriptions of all the happy couples I observed canoodling around me, tweeting birds and all. Then I met my future husband and my journal became filled with the agony and the ecstasy of trying to get a man; and then, having married him, the agony and the ecstasy of trying to keep him. I started Freudian analysis around this time so I used my journal to record my nightly dreams and the interpretations my analyst and I arrived at. (How I miss my analyst—the only person in the world who listened to my chaotic, Technicolor dreams with bated breath.) Interestingly, all I have to do is to reread one of these descriptions, even from years ago, and it’s as if I had the dream just the night before. I also made my first attempts at writing fiction, describing real scenes in my journal, which I thought might find a place in a future story. Here’s another excerpt from Boob: A Story of Sex, Cancer & Stupidity that I culled from my journal:
The Museum of Modern Art was my home away from home. I purchased a membership so I could spend as much time there as I wished. After prowling though the museum, I loved to sit in the sculpture garden. I would sketch, read, write in my journal, ruminate, and watch people.
“Did you know this is the biggest pick-up spot in New York?” a man asked me.
I looked up from my book of Sherlock Holmes stories, not sure if I was interested. “Really?”
He sat down at my table. “Yeah. See that guy over there?” He pointed to a Rudolph Valentino type complete with long, white silk opera scarf.
“Yes.”
“He’s a regular. Here every week.” He leaned towards me, and spoke confidentially. “He pretends he’s the son of a Greek shipping magnate but he’s really from the Bronx. And that guy over there—hold on a second. I’ll be right back.”
He jumped up and rushed away. I resumed reading my book.
The man returned, leading an attractive young woman by the hand.
“This is Juanita,” he said to me. I was surprised that a woman with strawberry blonde hair and freckles would have a Mexican-sounding name.
“Hi. I’m Karen.”
“Can you excuse me a minute?” the man said.
Juanita and I looked at each other while we tried to think of some conversational gambit. Juanita was the first to succeed. “How long have you known Barney?” she asked.
“That guy?” I said. “I just met him.”
“Me too!”
“Well, Juanita, I think …”
“My name is Julia! He calls me Juanita because he said it fit my personality better.”
Barney returned and we both turned to stare at him accusingly. “All right,” he said, “I thought you were both attractive.”
About ten years after graduating from Parsons, I took a creative writing class and was asked to write about the last time something happened. I chose to write about the last time I saw my dad who was dying of cancer. My journal supplied the backbone of the story since it contained specific, compelling details that I never would’ve remembered after the length of time that had elapsed—things such as the feel of a blueberry that has just been plucked, or how my dad’s arms were made hairless from the chemotherapy. But mostly it contained descriptions of how my dad talked, which I used verbatim:
“God has forsaken me,” my father said, exaggerating his voice like a member of the Peking Opera, an interesting technique that allowed him to be joking and serious at the same time. He made this statement while reclining in what he called his Frankenstein chair perhaps because he could crank it back—being a scientist, he liked to name things—in the study of his Angelica farmhouse.
“Maybe you have forsaken him,” I tentatively replied. But my budding spiritual awareness was no match for Dad, who’d been a cardcarrying atheist since before I was born.
“That’s a crock of shit!” Dad loved a good argument. “First of all, there is no God. But if there were, it would be a She, because only a woman could fuck things up this badly.”
Then, distracted by the sight of Calida placing a dish of scraps outside the kitchen door, he yelled, “Calida! If you’d stop feeding those kittens, they’d learn to hunt for themselves.”
Apparently not hearing him—she knew how to win a debate with Dad—Calida let the door close without answering. Unwilling to abandon the thread of his argument, he turned to me. “Give a man a fish, and you’ve fed him for a day. But teach a man to fish and you’ve fed him for a lifetime. That’s what I tried to do with Nerak, but she hasn’t caught any fish yet.”
When I was a child, Dad used to tell me stories about a little girl named Nerak who stupidly disobeyed her parents and got into terrible trouble as a consequence. It took me awhile to discover Nerak was my name backwards. If Dad hadn’t revealed that the popping sound his nose made when he “adjusted it” was actually caused by him flicking his thumbnail against his front teeth, I’d still think he had a broken nose, too.
Now he peered at me from under his schnauzer eyebrows, his alert blue eyes the color of Delft china. He had a look I recognized, kind of stern and self-conscious at the same time, like he was willing me to appreciate his humor, his charm or whatever the hell one called this onslaught of personality.
I was thrilled when the final draft of this story, called “Teach a Man to Fish,” was published in Widener Review in 1990. Then I got diagnosed with breast cancer, not once, but three times from 1991 to 1999. That’s when journal writing saved my life. I wrote about all the things that no one could ever really understand, not my mother, my husband, not even someone who’d had the same diagnosis because the experience is as unique and impermanent as a snowflake. I wrote about my doctors, my research, my reactions, and other people’s reactions. I wrote about all the crazy things I did to try to stay alive. I wrote about the death of my father-in-law from colon cancer in the middle of my chemotherapy. I wrote about the birth of my daughter after chemo had put me into premature menopause. I wrote about how I gave up hope after receiving my third diagnosis and about how I got my hope back after a year of despair. Cancer became a life-transforming event for me and I’m actually grateful I had it. I used a passage from my journal about getting radiation to begin the story “Tabula Rasa,” which was published in The Breast: An Anthology in 1995 after having appeared in Global City Review in 1994:
Every morning at nine o’clock I get my tits fried. Just one, actually. The right one. When I’m done I’m going to have a radiation barbecue. Cook the burgers right on my chest. This, the doctor says, is impossible because I’m not radioactive, but I like the image.
This opening line got the attention of Publishers Weekly when they reviewed The Breast: An Anthology:
Even the writing on the most obvious topics (topless dancing, breast feeding) comes couched in moving and original presentations … Karen de Balbian Verster’s fluid, moving story about a woman’s [radiation treatments] begins “Every morning at nine o’clock I get my tits fried.”
One story followed another and when I found I couldn’t publish them as a collection, I determined to craft them into a novel. That’s when I discovered the Achilles’ heel of journal writing—I’d developed the deadly habit of telling rather than showing. After years of revising, I think I’ve finally learned to discern the difference and to consciously choose one over the other. The reward for all this hard work is that Boob: A Story of Sex, Cancer & Stupidity was published in 2005. Being the author of a published novel has rocketed me into another dimension of writing since it has made me feel confident enough to reveal the real me, the me of my journals. You like me! You really like me!
I’m now in my early fifties and I approach journal writing somewhat differently. I used to be a lot more compulsive about it: every entry had to be sequentially written until the journal was full. Each person had to be introduced and all the background information given before the tale could commence. I had a journal for each subject: a dream journal, a writing-idea journal, an experiential journal, a running journal, an art journal. My journals had to be beautifully bound, filled with 8 ½-by-11-inch unlined vellum. Now I use cheap composition books and affix art reproductions or photographs to their covers. The contents are a mishmash of subjects. I write big, I write small, on the lines or on an angle. I use several journals simultaneously and keep them in different locations—my purse, my desk, and my bedside table. They cover any topic that appeals to me at the moment, but I am scrupulous about dating them in order to preserve chronology.
I also don’t write as voluminously in my journals as I used to. This is partly due to a less tempestuous life, and partly due to more professional writing opportunities. Every once in a while I’m in a situation where I’d die if I didn’t have my journal so I can immediately process my emotions or any event that requires a 360-degree exploration. However, I generally use my journals more as workbooks or scrapbooks of ideas and information.
I still record my dreams. My dream descriptions will probably never make their way into my published writing because dreams are like your poop—no one is fascinated by them the way you are. Actually, I lie.
Here is an actual dream I used in my novel:
After Dad died, Mom gave me the Kübler-Ross book [On Death and Dying], along with some birthday cards I’d made for him over the years. My therapist suggested that perhaps I got cancer as a way to be closer to my father.
I dreamed I was watching a group of women on a hillside. They were using a piece of farm equipment, perhaps a combine. I realized they were mermaids. Suddenly, they all turned toward the sea as a large man rose from the water. In place of a penis was an octopus, tightly furled. “Let her go, let her go,” they cried. He walked ashore and the mermaids got him by the legs and held him with the machinery. Slowly, the octopus unfurled its tentacles and the man removed a mermaid from its grasp. He let her go.
Now that I’m no longer in therapy, I like to describe my dreams in present tense and then I like to pick the strongest element of the dream and have a dialogue with it. I’ve learned a lot about my subconscious this way. I’ve also drawn images from my dreams. Rarely, I have a dream that provides the genesis for a story. Here is an actual dream I plan someday to develop into a novel or a screenplay which will be called “Thring.”
February 28, 2006
The world has come to an end as we know it possibly due to the dearth of bees, possibly due to “Blindness,” but it’s chaotic. Hordes of people are fleeing the unnamed Canadian city where I’m attending a party with thirty to forty people when this occurs. We’re eating hors d’oeuvres and discussing global warming. We stop to consider our options. I feel very strongly that we should get to BJs and stock up on food and batteries. I’m trying to figure out what food will be possible after the bees have stopped pollinating. The conversation drifts and I loudly resume my plea to get to BJs. Someone says, let’s go tomorrow. I say, by tomorrow it will be too late. Then I realize it is already too late; BJs is most likely being ransacked as we speak.
The next morning we board a tour bus. We drive through streets teeming with people on the move. We do not know where we are going. We hope we’ll know when we get there. I watch scenery through the bus window. It is mostly farmland dotted with buildings whose architecture appears to stem from a medieval Scandinavian period (if such a thing exists)—lots of gingerbread and onion domes. We pull into a medieval Scandinavian truck stop for lunch. The restaurant is crowded but a sense of order prevails. We dine on cracker barrel choices.
We board the bus and resume our drive. As night begins to fall, we stop at a medieval Scandinavian industrial park and enter a large, abandoned building, some of whose windows have been broken. We appear to be the only people in the building. We make ourselves comfortable. I look out one of the broken windows at a landscape so moonlit it looks snowy. I wonder what the future holds.
In search of a bathroom, I encounter two people in a room. They are poking through all the machines and scientific equipment. One of them says, look at this, and holds up a video. Play it, I say, pointing to a VCR. We stand and watch as the video commences. It’s in black and white with no gray areas. The images come and go faster than the speed of light. It is over before it has rightly begun. What was that I say, trying to make sense of the barrage of letters, designs and photos with which my brain was bombarded. But I am speaking to the empty air. The two people with whom I viewed the video are now fucking like rabbits on the littered floor. I watch for a moment, too surprised to be embarrassed. Then I sidle out of the room.
What happens next is that the video is a virus that lodges in the brain. One catches it through watching it, or interacting with someone who has. The virus causes loss of inhibition, and its aim is to consume as many healthy hosts as possible just for the hell of it—like computer viruses. At the end of this dream, I noted: Reread The Hot Zone and replicate viral behavior. Then combine with The Ring, The Thing with some Aliens ambiance thrown in.
Journal writing is like singing in the shower—I can let ’er rip without fear of judgment. And although it has given me some bad habits, it has also provided me with solace, entertainment, and enlightenment. Every time I go back and mine the raw ore of my subconscious I’m thankful I’ve pursued this endeavor. I will be a journal writer until the day I die, because as Anne Frank said, “I want to go on living after my death. And therefore I am grateful to God for giving me this gift … of expressing all that is in me.”