“You Must Remember This,” the unforgettable musical theme of the masterful 1942 film “Casablanca,” reminds us not only of the utility of the alertness to life’s crowd of daily tools, plus life’s complications and love’s fragility.
As well as such European memory giants whose fates also are locked forever to “Remembering This” are Samuel Pepys and Samuel Boswell, famed for their supreme utility of human-kind’s major memory tool: the ever useful, if easily forgotten “journal.”
The “London Journal” of James Boswell (October 29, 1740-May 19, 1795), and his universally famed “Life of Samuel Johnson,” are two universally known examples. And Boswell is often coupled in historical journal-keeping with Samuel Pepys (February 23, 1633-May 26, 1703).
Pepys was an English naval administrator and member of parliament who is now most famous for the diary he kept for a decade while still a relatively young man. He had no maritime experience but rose by patronage, hard work and his talent for administration to be the Chief Secretary to the Admiralty under King Charles II and King James II. His influence and reforms at the Admiralty were important in the early professionalization of the Royal Navy.
But it is the dramatic private diary Pepys kept from 1660 to 1669, first published in the 19th century, that is one of the most important primary sources for the English Restoration period. It provides a combination of personal revelation and eyewitness accounts of great events: the Great Plague of London, the Second Dutch War and the Great Fire of London.
Pepys’ diary, though covering only a nine-year period, is a favorite of many who consider this a habit of high value of self education and daily challenge. It is the practice that is basically a matter of serious self-discipline and the habit of closely regarding others.
For what a friend of mine calls “constant scribblers,” returning from a conversation, observing a mechanic skillfully repairing a car, shoeing a horse, events that are challenging, demanding, something “commonplace” yet instructive – the result has been pages of notes. When my wife, a friend and I spent time in Nepal several years ago, a place of course not only crammed with Buddhism, but a kickoff center for those then wishing to probe the Nepal-Tibetan border, and those Everest enthusiasts preparing for a climb.
Obviously, I returned home with hefty notebooks, crammed with most of what I saw, everyone I talked to, every Buddhist experience we had.
Journal-keeping was suggested to me shortly after I’d arrived as a youngster in Los Angeles by a German-educated doctor. He would become my mentor, and attributed his intellectual reach to his time at the University of Heidelberg (founded in 1386, the third university established in the Holy Roman Empire, and today the oldest in contemporary Germany). I’d just discovered California’s bullfighting enthusiasm and Tijuana’s bullfighting ring. My mentor, scornful of la corrida de toros, said any serious examination of Mexican culture would demand the maintenance of extensive journal keeping. He noted that entries regarding the corrida would improve my spelling, my ability to record rapid action intelligibly. Filling journals with serious intent brought me in contact with a Zen Buddhist-level of awareness. And that too – of course – became a key to serious existence, clearly an important element for a 17-year-old émigré from the Great Plains.
Journal keeping, plus clipped-together, hastily scribbled, crinkled pieces of paper stirred more constant alertness. They’re worth a ton to a writer desperate for memories he knows are there, but that have become foggy.
A complete, well-scribbled – and thus well-recalled – and preferably semi-legible scribbles can be golden when memory stumbles. A writer such as Didion, even if partially confounded, can squint, make tiny marks of evidence cough up rough evidence of past, helpful life moves. Suddenly slices of what one’s looking for comes alive, possibly in barely comprehensible pieces. But even for non-writers pawing about for sought-after memories regarding close friends, such scribbled evidence can be exhilarating. This is especially true as you grow older, and some moving friendship moments become foggy pieces in danger of disappearing. Suddenly you remember those times together in Paris, Morocco, New Deli, that path through tough moments in Central America.
A friend, not writer, has abruptly begun note taking. His objective: to become more “human” with his wife. They came to Lake Chapala to work out that problem. Even though they’ve been together quite some time, and have bought a house, he doesn’t think “it’s working out.” He still seethes with “the way she treats” him. “It’s like I’m there only some of the time. She plays cards, any kind of cards, with women friends.” He resents her excluding him every Tuesday and Thursday.
“Your wife played every week,” he says. “Didn’t being ignored for hours every week bother you. I mean, what did you do?”
This was before every child had an electronic teat to suck on. “I go after Mexican newspapers, magazines. I’m shamefully ignoring my daily meditation. I have a ton of magazines to pile in organized stacks. I have Mexican friends I need to see. Letters I have to answer.”
He grimaced. “I want to be busy with my wife. She wants to play god-damn cards.”
“Don’t let little stuff bother you. You’re a good carpenter. Build her that book case on the living room wall. she wants.”
“I don’t want therapeutic assignments.“
There it was. After years of marriage, he’s jealous of her female friends. Maybe it’s because he has no journal to show him that the love of their marriage isn’t so easily worn out.