When looking through notebooks…

Photos like these, random things, ribbon, and tape cover pages.

My room is chock full of odds and ends.  I essentially put a two bedroom apartment (minus my furniture and dishes) into one room.  This means that sometimes things look a little crazy when you walk in.  I know where everything is, but it doesn’t mean anyone else does.  My sister was coming home and she was going to stay in my room with me, so I decided that I would clean and organize to make her feel more comfortable.  While doing this, I tried to find a singular space for my notebooks. It didn’t work.   

My friends will tell you that I have more notebooks for my writing and art than most of them had for their school subjects.  I have boxes, bags, and stacks of journals that I have scribbled all over.  I have some that are used strictly for writing.  Some are just art.  Some are both.  Then you have the ones that are art, writing, scraps of poetry, grocery lists, phone numbers, online handles, etc.  No matter what, like my books, they are organized to the N^th degree.  Since I couldn’t find one place for them, I started to go through them and split them up by content.  

It was like going through old diaries.  I saw how my mood changes my handwriting from tiny and neat to loopy and large to calligraphy.  Some days I wrote on the lines.  Other days I wrote through the lines, diagonally across the lines, upside down, backwards, or up and down.  I found pictures that I had taken printed out in miniature form and taped to pages along with ribbons, tickets, tape, leaves, and whatever odds and ends I found inspiring.  I discovered doodles, scribbles, and strange little paintings.  Essentially, I found a hodge podge of fun things thrown down on paper.  I thought I would share some of the random writings I found on those pages.

Apparently, in college, my stray thoughts came out in poetry more often than not.  I have pages upon pages of lines like these:

They wait for the bell with baited breath on tongue
The nightmare swells as they stare out the windows
Wanting to break the wishbone that will free them again

The alcoholic returns to the chambers that offer oblivion
Their sliver of hope is drawn and quartered
While they rust away in pockets of loneliness

The sun uses rainbows as weapons of cheerfulness
Leaving all creatures haunted by their beauty as night stalks across the sky
And we look for the delicate sandpaper truth they leave behind  

Or directives to myself that look like this:

Write a memory of the soul.

Empathetic wheels on blacktop. (<–use this)

Write about Salem!

For the life of me, I don’t remember what that last one meant or why it was important enough to underline.  Nor do I remember what these were about (though I was apparently feeling profound):

Dreamers are writers who can’t find the words.
Writers are thinkers who can’t live their lives.
Hope is a person who’s dreams will not die. 

I have pages of the Mother Goose nursery rhyme “Sing a Song of Sixpence”.  I wrote it backwards, upside down, rightside up, normally, in mirror, in cursive, and in print.  Apparently, in college, it was my thinking thing.  I suppose that explains stray thoughts as poetry, but it is a touch of an oddity.  To this day, I can recite it at the drop of a hat, even though I can’t say I was conscious of writing it out so often.

In the midst of class schedules, grocery lists, and names of people I can’t place, I have poems like this:

       Kaliedascope
In the hope and dream
In the shattering 
Of an IBC root beer bottle
Life’s kaliedascopic view
Shimmers
Light the light exploding with the glass

Things that inspire me have always been simple, everyday things.  (If you don’t believe me, check those photos again and you’ll see manhole covers, squirrels, leaves, and a log in the water amongst other things.)  I don’t remember dropping the bottle, but apparently I found the shattering brown glass to be pretty enough for a line or six.  It makes me wonder if I could get back in the habit of thoughts as poetry.  It was a fun way to see the world.  College Christiana would be disappointed, I think, that I don’t write poetry and take the time to scribble like I used to.  I shall endeavor to do better.