Little notebooks.
My grandpa, Gene, always kept one in his shirt pocket, and I was fascinated. Of course, he kept a pen next to it too, clipped to the edge like a fish hook. I saw him write things down, but I never learned the content. In my childhood brain, I imagined that he drew pictures in his little notebook. He and I used to write letters to each other, and we somehow created a tradition of signing off with drawings. He often drew a character looking over a fence saying hello to me. Unlike Kilroy from WW II graffiti, Gene’s guy wasn’t a man with just a face and an elongated nose, he was a boy with a whole body. Sometimes my grandpa closed his correspondence with flocks of geese or a landscape. I always looked forward to my grandpa’s letters, and I was especially fond of those drawings. I wonder if anyone in our family had the chance to read his notebooks after he passed away. I hope someone did.
The small notebook is a bit like a writer’s security blanket. Years ago, when I had first moved from Florida to Chicago, I felt pretty homesick and almost regretful of my decision to uproot myself for art school and live in a big city with a freezing climate. I hadn’t made any friends, and I hadn’t met the boy-in-the-apartment-next-door who would later become my husband. I was lonely and scared, and my Dad came to my rescue. He sent me a little notebook. I still have it. It’s red and glittery, a happy journal. He wrote in it, encouraging me to fill it with one positive thought each day. It worked. I filled it, and by the end, like some sort of magic, I was adjusting to grad school, making friends, and talking to him about this guy I met in my building.
Little notebooks.
My brother keeps them too, and his are the best. He sent one to me a while ago, and I’ve dog-eared pages containing some real gems. It begins with:
“Greetings,
If you are reading this then I probably don’t have to explain what this experiment is, and at the same time I might as well claim the experiment a success. Redundant misspelled bullshit and all, I’m determined not to scratch whole paragraphs and as few sentences as possible, if for no other reason than it uglies up the page.”
Heh heh…Like me, how writing looks is important to my brother.
My journals are messy compared to his, especially the one that I’m quoting from right now. He did it. There isn’t a single scratched out word for 80 little pages.
It goes on:
“Currently it is 7:15 a.m. on Tuesday, and being Tuesday morning, I’ve got Marcy! (his favorite dj from Tampa’s best radio station, WMNF)…kick ass harmonies…’I’m a hot knife. He’s a pan of butter.’ Fiona Apple! Marcy always delivers.”
Later, he moves from his radio listening spot to a picnic bench by a lake. He writes:
“Behind me the wind is forcing dried up confessions out of a palm tree. Waves slapping against the dock have a ‘glup’ quality to an inconsistent beat, the harmonica right next to my left hand wants to bend a few, and I so wish to go home to a drunken piano. Wouldn’t it be cool if Tom Waits paddled up in a canoe right about now?”
Yes, my brother, THAT would always be cool.
And I’ll end with this sparkly nugget of his…
“I grew up in rural south central Wisconsin. Our two neighbors were each about a quarter mile away. A small family hog farm straddled the hill to the North and an even smaller dairy farm stood sentinel to the South. Our yard notched an acre out of a rectangular corn field that worked like a filter from the more pungent of the two farms, either that or the smell waifed over us, because it never got that bad. In fact, most of my olfactory memories of growing up don’t offend, even the frozen fish on the ice, cow shit, or a chain saw in action. I couldn’t have asked for a better sense of place, except possibly for a little less proximity to the road, which of course directly relates to the high pet mortality rate. But one of my earliest memories is of a busted streak around the house when a car went by and honked. Why my brother and I tried to run around the house naked I can’t remember, or how we planned to get back into the house unnoticed, but at any rate, I clearly remember getting yelled at for our heroic bravery.”
Little notebooks carry stories.
And here’s to the words within them!
