Chrisonomicon

Monday, August 12, 2002

There are several things I've wanted to write about lately, but this Internal Censor keeps me from laying it out in black and white. Although it's understandable, since afterall this journal is available to the public, this self-imposed censorship has kept me from getting to the core of what's going on in my head even when writing in traditional, paper-bound journals. Virgina Woolf encountered this, personifying the Internal Censor in her essay, "Professions for Women":

She was intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming. She was utterly unselfish. She excelled in the difficult arts of family life. If there was a chicken, she took the leg; if there was a draft, she sat in it. In short she was so constituted that she never had a mind or a wish of her own, but preferred to sympathize with the minds and wishes of others. Above all, I need not say it ? she was pure.... And when I came to write, her wings fell on my page: I heard the rustling of her skirts in the room.... She slipped behind me and whispered.... Be sympathetic; be tender; flatter; deceive... Never let any one guess you have a mind of your own. Above all ? be pure. And she made as if to guide my pen. I now record the one act for which I take some credit to myself.... I turned upon her and caught her by the throat. I did my best to kill her. My excuse, if I were to be had up in a court of law, would be that I acted in self-defense. Had I not killed her, she would have killed me.

It causes me a certain amount of angst to sense many of the same qualities of the Internal Censor within myself. Could it be that I've become my own blockade? I wonder if deciding to share my writings with an audience has calloused me into writing less-than-full-life entries and capturing "safe" moments. I wonder if I have it in me to lay it all out like it is.