Vivir para contarla

Gabriel Garcia Marquez titled the first book in the trilogy of his autobiography something that translates to "Living to Tell about it". Most Americans know him as the author of "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and one of three Colombians that they might know beside Pablo Escobar (dead drug trafficker) and Shakira (unfortunately for "Hips don't Lie")(Her lyrics in Spanish are much deeper; I'm not sure if she dumbed the English down for us or for herself). I don't know how people who keep diaries, journals, blogs, etc. and are living large find the time or the motivation to sit down and write about it. I'm certainly not living large but the day to day occupies me to the point that there is little time left to sit, reflect, and write about it. But I believe it's important.

Bill Clinton, promoting his memoire on David Letterman said that he recommends to anyone who reaches fifty years old to sit down and write their memoire. That is something to consider, but a blog is certainly a place to start and may be more representative of how we live our lives. Writing it down keeps it, which is something I need to do because the way I process and store information does not lend itself to having much in the way of memories. My sister says I don't remember anything. Our brains need connections to have memories be retained; my life has been comprised of some seemingly unrelated stages in which the various stages seem almost as if they were the lives of different people. Writing a memoire might help reconcile the various stages into a whole.

Writing is a tool often used to think something out, to make sense of a situation or issue, and in a larger way, to make life more meaningful, if only because it has been recorded. The challenge is to find the time to sit and make the meaning and give up a little of the living of it record it. I could take the view though of Jorge Luis Borges to whom the written word, live experiences, and dreams all ended up in his head as if they were all one and the same. I encourage us all to do the same.

Real people are beginning to populate my morning so I am going to turn my attention to them for some real human interaction.