My Life On A Stick

We’ve come a long way since “Dear Diary”.
The little book with the rubber band around
it.  Scribbled notes in almost legible cursive.
Private, not for public consumption.  Secured
between the mattresses.  Taken out only after
everyone else was asleep.  Read with the help
of a flashlight.  Dear Diary…today I kissed
Barbara Sue… ”

When a Diary grows up, it becomes a Journal.
Somehow it loses its intimacy, the Diary,
and takes on a more impersonal character.
In my Journal, I scribe the events of my day,
the significant moments, encounters and
experiences…but not too personal.  A Journal
page is a chronology of sunrise to sunset.
Good Night.  For historical purposes, it’s very
nice, like a Travelogue through Norway.  For
juicy reading, it falls short, leaving much
about desire to be desired.  Mystery too easily
defined.  A Journal is tidy and neat.  A Diary
is messy, margin notes and erasures, much
like life.

Journals become dust-catchers on the top shelf
in the closet as life becomes technologized.
A comical little two-inch piece of plastic
filled with wires and something called “circuitry”
stands on heaps and piles of Diaries and Journals.
Life is now on a Stick.  What an unappealing
name.  Stick.  Thumb-drive.  Flash-drive.  All
the same.  Mine advertises “256GB”.  How much
is a gigabyte of my life.  Who thought up that
name?  If I live to be 256-years old, I’ll never
fill the volume of my Stick.  It holds more of life
than life itself.  Unlike a sweet Diary or a
Journalized remembering, you can’t take a
Number 2 pencil and write a quick idea or a
moment of inspiration.  No.  Sticks don’t perform
unless they have USB Ports.  Don’t ask.

I would write a poem for you, something lofty
and grand…Roses are red and violets are
blue…but I’d have to put it on a Stick and then
you’d have to find a USB Port, and by then the
juices would have dried up.  We’ve come a long
way in self-expression.

Too bad.