Faded Ink

I once kept a daily journal. I applied quill and ink to parchment on a daily basis to record my thoughts and feelings as well as the events of the day. That ritual lasted about four years coninciding with the time that I studied at the academy in this fair town. Then one day I stopped writing. On occasion I hoisted the quill again, but never for more than a few days at a time. Eventually I fell out of practice completely.

That was a decade ago. I have saved all of those journals. They rest on a special shelf in my sleeping chamber so I know where they are at all times. I have recently been looking through some of them. Many are quite legible, but I am worried that the ink has faded in others. I can still decipher what I wrote if I look at the impressions that the nib made on the page. I worry, however, if a time will come that I can no longer read those entries at all.

I feel as though a part of my past is slowly being erased. It seems odd to nurture such feelings. After all, in a sense I have already lost every day of the last decade that I did not record anything in a journal at all. The days from the previous four years are now achieving parity with those that are more recent. On the other hand, I intentionally attempted to preserve my memories during a certain period. I invested time and effort in something that I expected to be more permanent.

Is it truly possible to record the past, even by writing something every day? Yes, I may mention something that was important to me in the moment, but it is impossible to re-create every event, every thought, and every feeling. For each entry that I record, there are dozens of others that I choose not to compose. My journal can only give a partial portrait of who I am and what I experience.