Common Diary
Common Diary
Recycled paper and Repurposed book
11”x7”x 2”
Use the fancy soap, write things down, and have your own separate bank account are the only pieces of advice I can remember and follow. My maternal grandmother died when I was young and after she had already passed, my mom found a poem she had printed out in her things. This poem wished the things that were set aside for the right the time and the right company could have just been enjoyed in the moment. The nice chocolates saved for later spoiled in the anticipation and the perfume reserved for special occasion went sour. Things are meant to be used, shared, and enjoyed. This diary is made from a book nearly a hundred years old, but was sitting in a corner of a antique store with fifty other forgotten books and falling apart. And I ripped those pages out to make something new and to honor what it was.
I don't know many of my grandma's stories, I was too young to ask and details of memories are hard to come by in later life. I'm also not sure she wanted her memories to out live her, burned the letters and writings from her young adulthood. Her stories reside in the scrapbooks my grandma collected and carefully arranged in her teenage years. Small scrapes of paper, bits fabric that only she knew the memory that went with it and a napkin from restaurants that have long since closed.
If you want to control your own narrative and how your stories live after you, either write them down or burn it!
Common Diary is a open diary for anyone to write stories, it could be of their life, families members, or friends. Use this as your own as you would your own diary, share memories of joy, fear, sadness, rage, or any other emotion of the human experience!
Entries can be an anonymous or with your name, just know that others will read them.
Thank you to the writers and the readers!
To hand write your own entry take a visits to the The Catherine G. Murphy Gallery
or fill out this form to be include in the diary
