It all comes back. Perhaps it's difficult to see the value
in having one's self back in that kind of mood, but I do see
it; I think we are well advised to keep in nodding terms with
the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company
or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us,
come hammering on the mind's door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and
demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going
to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could
never forget.We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what
we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were. I have
already lost touch with a couple of people I used to be; one of
them, a seventeen year-old, presents little threat, although it
would be of some interest to me to know again what it feels like
to sit on a river levee drinking vodka and orange juice and
listening to Les Paul and Mary Ford and their echoes sing "How High
the Moon" on the car radio. (You see I still have the scenes, but
I no longer perceive myself among those present, no longer could
even improvise the dialogue.) The other one, a twenty three year-old,
bothers me more. She was always a good deal of trouble, and I
suspect she will reappear when I least want to see her, skirts too
long, shy to the point of aggravation, always the injured party,
full of recriminations and little hurts and stories I do not
want to hear again, at once saddening me and angering me with her
vulnerability and ignorance, an apparition all the more insistent
for being so long banished.
It is a good idea, then, to keep in touch, and I suppose that
keeping in touch is what notebooks are all about.
From "On Keeping a Notebook" - Joan Didion (1966)