Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
notebook (essay)
(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.
about swimsuits
in the past six weeks of swimming at the ywca during my lunch-hour, i have figured out a number of things about bathing suits and regular swimming. the first of these, is those bathing suits designed to “flatter” certain parts of the body are not really suitable for distance swimming as they tend to do the “flattering” with an extra cloth layer and built-in support. this makes for more drag in the water, and both elasticity of the material itself and swimmer speed-agility suffer for the ego unecessarily. now that i am swimming many laps, several times a week, this annoyance has not been lost on me.
but if it’s true that flattering suits are not conducive to efficient swimming, the converse is also true: “speed” suits are without a doubt, the most unflattering thing i have ever encountered. low backed, cut into the breastline on the side, and with no support lining, it is as though they are designed to display every bulge and stretchmark. ack!
today, i bit the bullet though, as my older swimsuit has finally lost any semblance of elasticity – and bought myself one of those hideously revealing suits for “swimming” (as opposed to lolling, splashing, or frolicking). as with all things i had to remind myself that indeed i am not going to the ywca to impress anyone, and besides which being a “fast” swimmer is perhaps more impressive than being a skinny one – right?
at least, that’s what i told myself.
wait, it gets even better…..
i realized this morning that the hunter (you know, the exaggerating date from saturday night) doesn’t even know my name. i have corrected him in the past twice (somewhere along the way he picked up this tendency to call me “nancy” which is pretty far off from my actual name). this morning he called me “nancy drew” as a joke (which at first i couldn’t figure out, and would be annoying if my name really was nancy), and then later used the name again while talking to me. because there were other people around, i didn’t correct him this time. i’ll try to be discreet about that one, it’s sorta ridiculous at this point.
it seems nutty, but here i am….
i’ve decided to do nanowrimo this year – which is a curiosity even to me. i wasn’t even sure until last night at 12:01 (couldn’t sleep – fireworks), when i started penning my novel, to reach 50,000 words by month’s end.
no doubt – it seems really stupid, but the premise behind nanowrimo is actually sound – which is to get the first shitty draft of a book done without thinking about it too much – to suspend the internal editor in a fit of deadline-panic – and to just force the self to sit down every day to write. so far i have 2406 words between last night’s short burst, the ferry this morning and a mid-morning wait for file transfers that gave me another 40 minutes of writing space.
will i actually make the rest of the 47 594 words? that i’m really not sure about. so far i’m amazed i have got some sort of a story on the go, with characters and a plot direction and everything, and i didn’t start with much more than a general idea – but we’ll see. i’m sure my enthusiasm will wane somewhere in the first few days.
i will not be posting my nanowrimo work to this blog, though i will post my word count occasionally (or perhaps even daily) for those of you who want to cheer me on (and please do, cheer me on that is).
besides that, my swimming routine seems to have increased to 30 freestyle laps from 22, which i’m quite pleased about. whoooo! tuesday.
Red Cedar 