 “BURNING JOURNALS”© Copyright 2-22-2005 By Dana Shino, The Purple Phoenix, LLC www.thepurplephoenix.com As I read through my dusty old journals, gleaning gems and forgotten understandings, I realized how much of it was old news. . . really old news. Chronicles of Bill Leusink dating me my Sophomore year for several months prior to prom, then taking another girl after telling me he wasn’t going –THAT needed to go. Dumping my journals in the trash didn’t feel right and it occurred to me to burn them. There’s more ritual in fire! So, evenings, I carried my piles of paper outside with a butane lighter and crumpled the sheafs in my landlord’s wheel barrow. I felt a sense of satisfaction, relief and release watching the flames eat my handwriting and letting the words rise in the smoke. As I let go of journal after journal, and its’ baggage, I gradually recognized how much other dead weight and old energy I was schlepping with me in theValley and in storage in Greeley. Burning journals was just the beginning of a much larger project and process ahead of me. It was time to cast ballast so I could fly free. I returned to Greeley for Christmas. After that holiday and into the New Year I sorted through box after box. I hauled truckloads to Goodwill and the Salvation Army. I took things to the Ebay store, the pawn shop and the antique stores to sell. I gave things away. I peeled layer after layer of an old life and old energy away. At times I was afraid. There is a security in having things. It’s a layer of padding or insulation to ward off life. At times I heard myself thinking, “What if I need this?” And then I would hear a resounding line from Spirit over and over: “Have courage to let go.” And the loving intelligence in the words let me know that when I really needed something in the future, it would be there. To hold on to something ‘just in case,’ is allowing yourself to buy into fear. I developed a set of litmus tests to help me decide how to keep things or let them go. Could I lift and move it myself? Was it connected to good memories or bad? Was it useful or did it fill a specific purpose in my life right now? Did it make me feel good? And sometimes, I would just hold or touch a thing. If I felt it fly away from me, it was time for it to go. If I felt it connect to me and warm my heart, then it stayed. In the end, I surprised myself by letting go of my beloved road bike and industrial sewing machine. Joe had built me the bike, but I could not bring myself to ride it during the divorce and since. The sewing machine was wrapped in lost dreams. I had purchased it in the Spring of 2004, thinking Joe and I would soon be moving into a home where I would have a studio. The move never materialized, the machine went into storage and I never sewed on it once. I also discovered how the most insignificant items could be attached to larger events, right down to Rubbermaid food storage containers, recipe boxes and key chains. The Rubbermaid containers reminded me of how Joe and I had kept so much of our lives in storage as well as how often he would be angry at me for not stacking the containers properly. Needless to say, I replaced the white containers with red-lidded Rubbermaids... and I stack them however I damn well please. When my Grandmother and Grandfather Newby died last year and the estate was split up, one of the items given to me was my Grandmother’s recipe box. I found it again while sorting. Immediately, I was standing in her kitchen where it was warm and familiar and safe. And she was standing next to me while we talked and watched her robins out on the lawn. The recipe box still smelled like her kitchen. This, I kept. Towards the end of this process, one day I was absentmindedly fiddling with my key chain until I was really aware of it. It was the Indianan University emblem done in pewter. Ever since graduation, I’d been in the habit of always keeping my keys on an IU keychain. I had already worn out three IU key chains and this was my fourth. It was time to let go of whatever anchors I had with my alma mater. But there was also something else symbolically attached with this pewter IU keychain. The bottom portion of the IU emblem was curved and bent up, misshapen. Not only was I carrying the old energy anchor of college, but also the symbol of the day I realized my marriage was over. In the early Summer of 2004 I returned home from work to meet with Joe to discuss property business and go with him to a meeting. In the course of our discussion, which turned into an argument, I realized he had broken yet another agreement with me. I couldn’t go any further. In a moment of sheer disappointment, heartbreak and rage, when I couldn’t contain myself anymore, I threw my keys to the floor with such force it bent the bottom rim of the IU emblem up. That key chain went to Goodwill. The next day, while sorting a box with memorabilia from my trip to Taiwan, I discovered a Chinese key chain. It had a large ceramic white bead and red tassel with red cording tied in the symbol of “Peace.” The energy of the things embedded in our lives speak to us in so many different ways. Here’s the poem I wrote about burning my journals: “Burning Journals” By Dana Cribari Copyright 12-07-2005 My phone is hooked to nowhere, living in coyote moon along jack rabbit road country, where the ranchers braid dust for a living. If a place could rattle lonely in a crib of things I swore I’d never miss, this four square might be it. Yea, it might be it. At night, when a clock’s tedium threatens my sanity, I promenade my ship’s deck, the mother lode, floating the prairie anchorless. The night swallows me: an eternal black oceanic sky swathed in layered sprays, stars shattering the night. I’m almost gone when my bones vibrate, doused in astral whale calls undulating the cosmos. These are the nights, only 2 degrees below the zero mark, I save to burn my journals. Page by word by flame I signal the Pleiades with my word-filled smoke – “Million mile collect call, Please.” The dust braiding ranchers might argue for my craziness. But, I think, how long must I keep my words? When does the statute of limitations bleed meaning from journalled ink? I tell you, I could drown in the angst of half truths and whole truths fouled by misconceptions. I could drown in the unmistakable innocence of an untouched naked truth. I could drown. But I don’t. I burn the words lived once and not again. I burn the words I lit years ago, their forgotten embers glowing in a slow burning arc, looping back to softly kiss truths upon my words today – before I let them go word by word to flame and smoke. Before I let them go.  Your contributions help support The Purple Phoenix Press.
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