Areas of Unrest

28 May 2000 - People of the Notebook

QOTD: "The Fourth Law of Robotics: A robot must sell like crazy." - Anonymous

Reading: Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

Listening to: Pierre Bensusan, Musiques

Jews are said to be "people of the book." My family are, specifically, people of the notebook.

Consider my mother. She copies song lyrics into her lyrics notebook. She copies recipes into her recipe notebook. She keeps track of refund offers she's sent for in a looseleaf notebook. When I was in eighth grade and all the kids in school were starting to tell dirty jokes, I told her a few and was rewarded with getting to see her dirty jokes notebook.

My brother has a day to day notebook that functions as diary and financial record. Then there's a whole series of notebooks in which he records sports scores and statistics. I believe they're primarily related to Italian soccer teams, but I'm afraid to ask. He has a whole closet full of spiral bound notebooks.

My tendency to be compulsively organized leads me to use a lot of notebooks. I am particularly fond of 8 1/2 by 5 1/2 inch looseleaf notebooks. There are two of these for financial matters, both with black covers. One is really just a check register. Since I use duplicate checks, it is easier to keep the longer term records using the day runner check register pages. The other financial notebook has sections for keeping track of various investments, for recording charitable contributions, and for periodic summaries of my assets. Then there is a white notebook that serves as a general diary, though I only write in it a few times a year. Most of the entries have to do with major events - wars, riots, earthquakes, etc.. And birthdays. There's a very thick black notebook that serves as a travel journal. Then there's a grey one with sections for quotes, dreams and song lyrics. And, finally, there's a blue general notebook with a lot of miscellany, including writing ideas (e.g. possible titles for mysteries, pages of clever phrases that didn't work in the pieces I originally tried to use them in but I know I will need someday, my notes for an introduction to feminist classics, etc.), notes from various classes and workshops, assorted lists (e.g. all the countries I've been to, several pages of mnemonics, tongue twisters), a recipe for homemade glass cleaner and the fortune from every fortune cookie I've gotten for the last six years.

I also have hard-backed journals. I keep a book journal in which I write anywhere from a half page to several pages about every book I read. I keep another journal in which I write reviews of movies, plays and concerts. Last year I started a similar journal for restaurant meals, though I haven't been as consistent about it. The major purpose of all of these is to force myself to be thoughtful about the experiences, to elevate them from mere distractions to subjects to be reflected upon.

There are assorted other notebooks around from before I settled on this system. I'm slowly transcribing the useful contents of them into their proper places. There's a blue spiral bound notebook that has 4 pages of a short story, notes from a workshop on mystery writing, a list of the things damaged when my upstairs neighbor flooded my apartment over ten years ago, several lists of things to do from 1992 (sadly, at least three quarters of the things on the lists remain undone) and a list of stocks to consider investing in. A hardbound notebook has lists of books I read in 1991 (before I started being thoughtful about them), three tries at the start of a story I still haven't finished though I have told it a few times, notes about freak show barkers (that also has to do with a storytelling project, but it's one I've more or less abandoned for lack of progress) and a list titled "simple joys" from 1990 that includes such items as putting in the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle, singing along with a Stan Rogers album, wrapping coins to take to the bank, and drinking freshly brewed coffee with rum and whipped cream.

There is also the following list, which I now find unfathomable:

bicycle
team made up of women and player walked home to get it
contains every letter in the alphabet
the other was the son's mother. Headboard of carnal lust.
oriole, orange, Month, oil. Month does not start with "o".
[Harem]

There are probably equally mysterious notes in my organizer (which also functions as address book, calendar, expense record, shopping list, and place to keep maps of the Washington, D.C. and Rome subway systems even though I go to neither of those cities regularly). Well, okay not quite equally mysterious. I suspect part of the list above had to do with a puzzle I was working on. But headboard of carnal lust?