It’s Sunday And My Notebook Pages Are Still Blank So I Typed This Up Instead

I read a marvelous post close to a month ago, penned (does one who types still get credit for penning?) by @rkrystalli at Stories of Conflict and Love about the reminders of the past year.  My comment mentioned how I also keep little bits of ephemera and errata and slap them in my notebooks.  Roxanne directed me to another post she had written about notebooks.  It was about more than notebooks, of course.  It was about how She uses notebooks and writes her life.  She let us inside her life and provided a guided tour.

Not only did she point out her post, she suggested asked that I write about what’s in my notebooks and how I choose what gets to reside there.  I’ve been thinking about avoiding writing this for a while.   There isn’t any set rule or guidelines to what I do.  Perhaps I should attempt to explain.

Several years ago, I found myself in a downtown store that is now closed.  It was called The Pen Point and sold very nice pens, greeting cards, upscale toys, stationary, doo-dads, gee-gaws and notebooks.  I honestly forget now why I was there on this particular day, but I ended up buying a fountain pen.  Or ink cartridges for a pen I already had.  I’m not sure and it’s not important.  The other thing I bought was a Moleskine pocket sized notebook.  Lined, of course.  Problem was, I had no clue what to write in the darn thing.

I’ve always wanted to BE a writer, but for one reason or another because I’m lazy I never quite got ’round to writing very much.  Oh, I wrote a few short stories and and various and sundry times toted around a spiral notebook full of deathless prose and angsty “poetry” that dripped so schlock you’d think it just got out of the shower or was trying to drown.   However, I’d never made a concerted effort to actually write for a sustained period of time.  It would get ‘hard’ and I’d see something shiny and become distracted.  Or quit something.

But I had fallen in love with the feel of the Moleskine.  It’s weight was perfect, it fitted in my hand like it was made for my hand.  It had the spiffy pocket in the back where I could put “stuff” even though I was baffled as to what.  Then, oh then I read the “history” of the Moleskine that came tucked in said spiffy pocket.  It sang of Chatwyn and Picasso and even though I’d never heard of the former or cared about the latter, I just KNEW I was on the precipice of…well, of something.

So, I numbered the pages.  In green ink, as I recall.  And started to carry it around with me.  But I didn’t write much in it because I felt that such a perfectly sized work of art notebook needed something Grand and Wonderful lovingly written on it’s creamy off-white pages numbered with green ink.   Truth is, 192 pages of blank paper scared the bejeesus outta me.  So, I tucked my fear in my back pocket and tried to vanquish it by sitting on it, walking around with it and thinking.

Gradually, bit by bit, I started writing in it.  Horrible stuff.  Baseball scores, thoughts, and dreadful poetry.  I tried being a deep thinker and made it about as far as a row-boat captain.  Slowly, gradually, I saw the green page numbers getting larger as I put more of myself on the paper in the little black notebook that now had a slight curve in it from riding in my back pocket and being sat on.

That same day, I also bought a couple of notebooks that are considerably larger.  Well, in paper size they are.  They only have 68 pages in them and they are from Japan.  They are divine to write in with a fountain pen.  I carried one of those in my back pack for a while, trying to decide what to do with it.  It had the same problem gave me the same dilema as the Moleskine in that “whole-gotta-fill-it-with-something-special” nonesesne.  In time, it became a journal.

I’ve been writing in or at these two sorts of notebooks for a while now.  Along the way, I’ve taken to decorating them.  Since I have the artistic senses of a drunkard in the gutter, I tend to use what’s at hand.  Stickers from bananas, apples, oranges, new CD’s, DVD’s, or whatever else falls my way.  I use all the stickers that come with special edition Moleskine’s as well.  And warning stickers, and…like I said, there isn’t any rhyme or reason.  If it’ll stick, it gets stuck.

I also like to tape fortunes from cookies on pages.  And tickets from movies.  When I was a kid, all the tickets looked the same.  They came on huge rolls like you get at the county fair and were usually green or gray with ‘Admit One’ stamped on it with a number that meant nothing because there wasn’t a drawing for a door prize.  These days, you get the name of the movie on the ticket, what time the show is, what theater, blah, blah, blah.  I like to tape those in my notebook.  Usually my journal.  It leaves a marker of where I was or what I did and doesn’t require a lot of work.  I don’t always do it because sometimes I forget or I get lazy.  Or both.

Newspaper articles, notes, wristbands from events; sometimes these get taped in the journal.  Or slid between pages and held in place with a paper clip that I’ll just end up losing but feel compelled to try and use regardless.  Take 0ut menu’s, brochures, napkins, receipts, bus passes, losing door prize tickets, whatever appeals to me at the moment.  I’ll put them away for someday.  Or better yet, for somebody else to throw out when I’m dead and gone.

We don’t go much of anywhere, or do much of anything.  Not like many of you who travel all over the world doing great things and seeing wonderful places and meeting with fabulous people.  So, when we do go to Chicago or New York or St.  Louis or even down the road a piece, something solid to remember it by, I put in my journal along with parts of me in the form of spilled ink and emotions and thoughts and run on sentences.

I paid too much for that first Moleskine.  I always pay too much for them.  I’ll continue to pay too much for them.  They’re not notebooks for me anymore, they’re bandages and bags and scrapbooks and wallets and….

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Thank you for reading!

Tags: depression, thoughts