Are You, You?

Writers live multiple lives. They can create characters who seem real to their readers. Harry Potter and company, though they're sorcerers, are all too real to millions of viewers and readers. Agent 007 will remain as young and as cool as the actor playing him at any time. The Die Hard Cop will be forever tough.

A lot of novelists live colorful lives, but there are those whose lives are as drab as the grey skies over at Washington State. But when they start to type those words, their little creatures come to life.

I wonder about those writers who can concoct exciting personalities, live them in the blank pages and yet, personally, they don't seem to leap out of the bound books they've written.

Believing in the characters or the plots that writers turn out are acceptable; but readers should not start to live the lives of these imaginary creatures, no matter how brilliantly concocted they are.

Diaries No More.

Far left - Anne Frank
Left - Dr. Jose Rizal


Yes, diaries.

Today's diaries are mostly appointment books - those leather-bound beauties the business types carry, alongside their blackberries.

But there's also the digital diary. Which allows you to write your diaries every day without needing to write stuff in text files; it comes with features which help you to organize your time, minimize your effort and remember your best memories audibly and visually.

Another diary-type organizers are the computer software found in our PC's or Mac's - Outlook, for instance, or those features in your cell phone, iphone and blackberry where you can organize your contacts, manage and sync appointments with calendars.

People keep diaries for different reasons: to write their innermost thoughts, to capture their creative ideas, or to record their many journeys.

The question is, do people still keep physical diaries today? The type where you actually write long hand?

Or, do our memories today just imbedded as doc.files, or in the pages of facebook or myspace, or in one's personal blog?

Mothers kept diaries and wrote down the birth of a child, even inserting a piece of baby's hair, his first woolen socks, his first scribbling, within the pages of the diary.

A teen-aged girl maintained her diary and wrote about her first crush, her first kiss, her prom date, her secret longings, and would insert a rose petal from a bouquet given by a boyfriend, or a ticket stub of the first movie-date.

Fathers maintained diaries to keep track of a business, of a job, inserting receipts and bills within its pages.

Then there are the travelogues. Professional travellers always maintained diaries to record the places and events they went to and saw, perhaps, pasting photographs within its pages.

Imagine if people of the past did not keep personal diaries.

Then, we would not have known about the poignant story of the Jewish girl Anne Frank and our hearts would not have cried having witnessed both the suffering and hopes of a people and a generation, and we would not have been made aware of a psychopath's atrocities.

Then, we would not have known about George Washington's brave incursions into enemy lines or how he endured a winter at Fort Erie, where he almost died, delivering a message at the front line, during the American civil war.

Or we would not have known about the sufferings of some of our Filipino heroes while they were studying in Spain, such as Juan Luna, who would smoke discarded cigarette butts, if not for Rizal's habit of writing diaries.

Much of what had been written about Rizal was derived by his biographers, largely, from his travel diaries. They included his later trips home and back again to Europe through Japan and the United States and, finally, through his self-imposed exile in Hong Kong.

Indeed, a diary is a recorder of the many journeys in one's life.

Today, however, these physical diaries are fast disappearing. Taking its place are the computer or digital diaries - the blogs, myspace, facebook; cyber-diaries where people log and write their adventures, their loves, their jobs, their friendships, their mis-adventures.

These digital and cyber diaries could be stored forever. Or could be lost in an instant. They could be deleted by accident or by choice.

These new diaries can be as fleeting as some of the friendships people find in these new cyber-infrastructures.