So I have three journals (as of now) that have studiously kept time with me on this journey. And I haven’t published one in toto, yet. Most of the first couple of months were in the brown. It had already been a companion for the last two years for meetings, ramblings, poetic thoughts, and visuals. Therefore, it felt right to be the repository to the flood that poured out (or trickled at times) in the immediate period after Gabriel’s death.

The blue journal, I don’t really know how I got it. I think I had ordered something for Rhys and that was an add-on. Or maybe I ordered the wrong thing (the blue) and then eventually got the right thing and handed it off. Nevertheless, when my pages in the brown ran low, I grabbed the blue journal cause it was right there.

As I started to run low(ish) in the blue, I also happened to be in Portland with my HS friend Chris. And Chris does a really good job of looking out for me. He didn’t know that I was nearing the end of one journal, but he likes being outside and always wants to go do things together, so we had been out frolfing (disc golf) and happened to drive by an art store and he needed to check on buying a thing for home. I migrated over to the journals and picked up the black one. By the time we got back to his house, I realized the black one wouldn’t really work out. So the next day he took me back to buy a red one that’s externally identical (save the color) but internally it has a consistent page pattern (whereas the black had grid, blank, and dot grid pages). So I started using the Red once the blue filled up (see my Ridghaus IG around October 19, 2020).

It has felt important to me that I post the reflections from the journals. I DON’T KNOW WHY. And it felt important that I permit a year and a day to pass before posting. These last three months, I haven’t posted anything. Some of that absence is just the emotional labor of revisiting the writings and the emotions both then, and now. Some of it has been our nomadic life here in the time of covid. Loosing ourselves from a “home” permits freedom and is simultaneously burdensome to find a space to sit, read, reflect, research, write, and post so starting today, I’ll post an old (e.g., between 11/30/2019 to 2/28/2020) entry along with the new ones – 3/4/2020 and following, both here and on the a_year_on_ IG.

My initial idea around this was to post a photo of the journal pages, so my process has been to write, to photograph the page/s, transcribe into an online format (sheets), and then to match page photos to dates and any other relevant photography/videos that accompany that entry. I’m not sure the photograph of the page is all that relevant. If you’re reading these, send me a note – do you still want to see the physically written pages? I think for me, the physical act, the writing, the scribbles, the typography all were part of the emotional piece of processing this loss. Plus sometimes I just draw things, so maybe then, I’ll re-incorporate some of-the-page photographic piece.

Thanks for walking this part of my journey with me. Maybe you know me, maybe you don’t. Maybe you know Gabriel, maybe it’s only here that you learn of his life. Nevertheless welcome and I hope you find peace amidst the loss.