Notebooks

Spiral bound are the most practical, the easiest to sink into, like into a soft, dirty couch. There is no worry of sullying a dirty couch or a spiral bound notebook.

Hardcover are often beautiful but difficult to use because they feel formal, important. What could I put in a hardcover notebook that could possibly measure up to the profundity of its shell?

Large books are daunting but sometimes freeing.

Small books are easy. They usually cost $2 and are called things like Mini Neatbook and Pock-it Scribbler. They fit in a pocket or a bag without being obtrusive, without accusing you of disrespect. They can slip into corners and behind desks and be forgotten for years and will not hold a grudge.

I collect notebooks. Some people think I collect ducks, squirrels, J.Lo trivia, shoes, CDs, ex-boyfriends. But actually and shamefully, I collect notebooks. They serve as affirmations, these many beautiful trees. They assure that I can accumulate a writerly life around me, keeping steady in a state of perpetual preparation for the moment when I blast through the velvet curtain and enter the world of Writers who Publish. Collecting notebooks keeps me from leaving backstage. Oh all right. I use notebooks to keep myself from leaving backstage. Shush.

Because: if I surround myself with enough Opportunity, surely I will take the time to empty my brain of its constant yammer and pull from the world and mark with ink all the minor details that flood my senses. If I have several notebooks and four pens (two black, a blue, a red) near me at all times, the opportunity to record will not be missed.

The notebooks watch me from atop my desk and from within the desk’s drawers. They scream to be let out of cardboard boxes and taken down from dusty shelves. Most have at least one or two pages with words on them (traditionally “This is my new notebook!” or “A new pen! It is black!”) and then nothing else, just blank pages, waiting. Others contain the first three chapters of a novel or the first 1,000 words of a manifesto. They contain poetry written on the bus, short stories written in the food fair at the shopping mall, recipes copied from posters in lunch rooms, names and phone numbers for people I don’t remember and probably won’t call.

I draw the notebooks around me, paper cloaks of safety. The more I have, the less I feel pressured to move past them, take the next step. After all, filling all these notebooks could take years! (Especially if I keep buying more!)

The next step, then, is to transform or re-guide my stubborn avoidance of actually using the notebooks into an equally bull-headed committment to fill them with words and ideas and see what magic that might bring.

I will fill them, one by one:

Hardcover green velvet notebook.
Small, brown “Dickens” notebook.
Stories 2002.
Dollar Store notebook (Purchased for the following saying printed on the cover: “It is the peculiarity of knowledge that those who really thirst for it always get it.”)
1 subject wireless notebook. (Alas, not a laptop computer at all. It’s a very good thing I don’t have enough money to collect laptop computers.)
Large hardcover sketchbook with flowers on it.
Small hardcover sketchbook with little butterflies on it.
“Fat L’il Notebook” with illustration of baby dressed as flower.
Stories 2002 (yes, another one)
Light blue 3-subject notebook.
Dark blue 3-subject notebook.
Red 3-subject notebook.
January Project 2002.(it was a hopeful year, 2002)
Hardcover 400 page journal from Lee Valley Tools. It is so nice, its pages are numbered (!) and it has a ribbon page marker.
Small notebook with plastic cover and smiling butterflies.

And no more new pens, either. But that’s a different story.