Keepers of journals and diaries make daily entries for several reasons, but one theme is often repeated. Diarists say that if they fail to record a day, it almost seems like it didn't happen. Life is composed of days, so my own fits and starts at journaling are attempts at preserving life itself.

This week I began to wonder about the longevity of the pages I write upon. My journals line several shelves of our study -- a room in a wooden house just above our big wood stove. I once considered purchasing a fireproof vault, but the journals have grown too numerous. Fire, of course is only one threat. Floods, insects, and common dry rot can destroy them. Beyond these, a question remains. If no one ever reads these daily entries, would my days, as I lived them, simply disappear?

A year ago I began to keep an electronic calendar on the Google website. These innovative calendars allow me to layer all of the parts of my life onto one big calendar, or to view them separately. For example, I have a work calendar that everyone in the organization can view, plus a "behind the scenes" one for staff. I keep a farm and family calendar, another for horse activities, and a third for our writers' group.

When I log an event on Google I assume a certain permanence in the action, but I have realized that these electronic entries are no more resilient or secure than the paper journals I compile. Google might fold; the Internet might collapse. The written record, whether paper or electronic, seems rather transient.

A recent article about haunting (the ghost kind) led me to consider all of this from another angle. A virologist, Luc Antoine Montagnier (known for identifying the HIV virus), discovered that sterilized water still held the electromagnetic signal (EMS) of the bacteria it had once contained. Despite the sterilization process, the bacteria could be cultured again over a few weeks. By diluting the purified water many times, Montagnier was able to detect the EMS of the bacteria.

The author of the article made a mental leap to wonder if human life made its own electromagnetic stamp on the universe. I wondered about the sub-atomic particles contained in the ink by which I make my marks on paper. Does anything live on after the pages have crumbled?

Our culture's literature tells us that our days are gods, given to us one by one, and gone forever when they are spent. The impulse that diarists have to capture each day is, I think, a somewhat holy impulse, but a misbegotten one.

I tend to record what I do each day. But time and history, if they remember anything, don't seem to care much about our doing. I know from the cemetery on our farm that the "doing" of a life (born, died, wife, mother...), carved into stone, will eventually be erased by the elements. When I visited Westminster Abbey I scoffed at the vain attempts of the wealthy to preserve themselves in elaborate vaults and statues. I realize, now, that I am doing the same, trying to etch myself onto pages of paper.

If anything remains of us, it is not our doing, but our being -- some essence we can't imagine, but throughout history have tried to discover. Perhaps this essence is strengthened by the dilution of time, as Montagnier's bacteria lived on, despite having no scientifically detectable presence in the water.

I am not sure what all of this means for the act of journaling. I am pretty sure I will keep writing, but with a new understanding that those ink marks are not for then, but for now. They are not for future readers, but for the present writer. What matters is not what I do, or accomplish, but who I am at a level that is beyond form. Writing helps me figure that out. The gods that are our days don't rely on me to write them into existence. Neither can I write myself into posterity. I guess I'll just write.

Susan Gladin is a freelance writer, United Methodist minister, and executive director of the Johnson Intern Program in Chapel Hill. She tends horses and a home business on the farm she shares with her husband. Their two grown daughters live nearby. You may e-mail her at sglad1210@aol.com.