Notebooks

As much as I like to write, I have never had much follow through or patience. I like the concept of being a "writer" but I tend to wallow in the idea more often than doing the work that would make it a reality. I'm quite pleased with myself for actually maintaining this blog for two years now. If it wasn't public, I doubt I would have stuck with it. Nothing like blogs existed in the 70% of my life that was pre-internet. But what is the modern definition of a writer? It used to mean a novelist or newspaper columnist. Maybe all this time that I have aspired to be a writer, I've actually become one. I suppose being paid is a good indication of writerdom. My friend Dave doesn't get paid but he is among my favorite writers. I have all his old pre-internet letters and they would make a hilarious "collected letters" book. I wonder if the equivalent of "the collected letters of author name here" will be replaced by "The Collected e-mails, Tweets, and Facebook posts of author name here." What would Shakespeare's tweets have been like had the technology been there or Bukowsi's or Virgina Woolf's? I lost a thousand or so emails exchanged with an ex-girlfriend (due to old Yahoo mailbox limits) written during the two worst years (in hindsight) of my life. (See "cakewalk of pain" below). I know there were some answers in there that would shed some light on what the hell I thought I was doing, but I'll never see them again, perhaps for the best.
What I do have is dozens of notebooks I bought whenever I was finally going to sit down and start my writing life. True to form, each has maybe 20 pages filled, and the rest is blank. Why was it so important to start a new one after abandoning the previous one for a year or so? I just love a crisp new notebook and not some old used one that's already written in. Silly but true. Sometimes I'd just flip the old one over and upside down and start writing from the back. SO. I am now paging through some of them and I thought I'd share some of the more notable entries. They are mostly short phrases. I know this is somewhat vain, and disciplined writers (especially Stephen King, whose On Writing I'm reading now) would scold me for dumping these nuts and bolts out on the floor. I have no defense. At some point I should cull all the worthwhile stuff out and consolidate it. Much of the contents is captured thoughts for use in "the novel" or memoir that will probably never be written. If I can even decipher my atrocious handwriting (example below.) Some of this I have no recollection of writing at all and I can't figure out what I was getting at. Some of it isn't even interesting so just for fun and to tempt buried meaning, the illustrations I've included are random images I found by googling the various scribblings (or parts of them) that precede them. I'm addicted to juxtapositions.

Rough draft of a poem read at my sister's wedding. (Pic is random, not us)
My sister Sarah is the son my parents never had.
She's got a lot of sand in her, and guts and lily pads.
When I tried out for Little League I couldn't play the game,
But Sarah led the Lassie League to slow pitch softball fame.
I've loved her since the 60s when she was a little baby.
When she grew up and guys would ask, I'd say I'm not sure...maybe.
When she came out her stymied suitors voiced a knowing Doh!
They should have seen it all along, the girl was indigo.

Fragments:

Malignant magic

Yawning earth

Thimble rigging
Old blind visionaries

Top and bottom shelf of the soul

Living but no longer longing

Pegged by a cupcake
http://www.scribd.com/doc/3230/Robert-Crumb-The-Religious-Experience-of-Philip-K-DickSports is beer.
I feel like it's worse now. Everything is worse. Things aren't even things anymore. They've lost their very thingness. Things have to sell things now.
My cakewalk of pain

Look upon all circumstances with the gratitude of a pupil.

Why no bus baggage security or bag scans etc.?

Live neither in the present, past, or future but in the eternal.

How could I end it?

Amputees disarm me.

Taking potshots at the hotshots and the bigwigs at their shindigs, free trade organic torture, minty fresh bloodshed, universal wealthcare, trim the hedge funds, risk profile of a salad bar, anti-retroviral pro-biotic carcinogenic Tuscaloosa pancakes.

Look out baby that shit's about to quintuple and leave us surfing with the cannibals.

People who bought this title also bought: The Tipping Point, crack cocaine in a public park.

That's nonsense? Nonsense!

Does the face look uneven, does one arm drift down, does their speech sound slurred.

What can your body do to your body?

Duck Duck Goose is like Russian Roulette for kindergartners.

George Bush should be challenged to take the SAT test. If he said no, he'd look scared,and if he took it, well, we'd see. I'd bet he'd get 400s.

I want to see an iMac in the Oval Office.

Do presidents really work at the Oval Office desk like we would at our jobs? What's in the drawers. Does the White House place Staples orders? Do they ever make copies? Replace toner cartridges? I mean, what isn't delegated? Do they staple?
Nixon was a character in MAD magazine to me. McGovern was a sticker on our family's van.

How long have you been her?