Red Cedar

(this is the first thing i wrote in my new notebook)

a fresh, blank notebook is like a secret promise that this time, finally, one will get the words right. those would be the words that keep the relationship intact, get the poem published, find their way into the hearts of friends and strangers alike. there will be no cliches in this new notebook, no hackneyed phrases, no overdone metaphors. but insightful nostalgia. yes! duotonal melancholy – of course! in fact, all the shades of vibrato to bring the words living to these fresh, untortured pages.

such high hopes for the new notebook i always hold – as though the quality of the paper, the tactile resonance of the bound cover – will magically infer writerliness upon me. as though the dividing line between “writing” and being “a writer” is captures in the mysticism of the print shop that cut the paper and bound it together.

this, i think, is not entirely untrue. for like a fresh yard of cloth will induce a quilter to sew, a fresh skein of wool will inspire the right type to knit – the unmarred notebook does of course encourage new words into it – channeled through the person in its possession. the sheer novelty of materials provokes a powerful urgency unmet by any other trigger – the urgency to complete – even if it only means filling the pages with nonsense.

this sensibility has always provided a source of frustration for me – for i almost always desire a new notebook before i have filled the one previous. all my life, since small childhood pretentions to poetry, i have been somewhat aggrieved by this fact of a handful (or more) of blank pages left at the end of each journal, sketchbook, or notepad. strangely this barely seems to correspond with the size of the notebook. slimmer volumes, thick sketchers, thin examination booklets – no matter which, all stand at the end of their usefulness to me with several blank faces staring back. of course, i pledge with each new purchase, this time it will be different even if it means filling some of the pages with random notes and doodles rather than cogent sentences and ideas.

in the age of the laptop and the powerful portability of digital media, it seems curious that the simple white-paged, black-covered journal continues to hold such an allure. i suppose this is partially because of the paradigm in which i grew up – but there is also the fact of accountability in the analog physicality of the object itself. words written on a laptop, posted to a web page, tucked away in folder with .doc attached to their filenames – have a somewhat more transitory nature than those inked in hard-bound pages. while the virtual space is infinitely malleable and does not by necessity encroach into our physical world – the box of notebooks that i have added to slowly since the age of five – remains with me, a reminder of who and what i have been. the handwriting, doodles and phone number scrawled in the back of each book speak as loudly as my immature poetry, prose and journal insights themselves. each possession a persona in a way that ones and zeros (no matter how artfully arranged) never could.

here’s one more book for the archive, another promise likely to go unfulfilled, as i mark time trying to get the words to finally come out just right.