Blank notebooks

Author Note: I wrote this Saturday night, but I didn't have internet, so was unable to post. Here it is the way I wrote it on Sat. night.

March 15, 2008

The Problem:

I bought a blank notebook today. I bought many other books also, but a blank notebook was among my possessions. The notebook is gray and it has the word “create” on the front, and then you open to a completely blank page.

The Con:

I hate blank notebooks, and yet I buy them. Blank notebooks give you a feeling of absolute uselessness. I don’t know what to do with them. Are you supposed to fill it, or leave it half-empty? Are you supposed to write in it? Are you supposed to draw in it? Should I be writing poetry? What would my poetry look like? (I’m as interested as you). However, with this particular notebook I have greater problems than finding what to do with it. The book says what I am supposed to do with it, I am now expected to “create”. It says “create” right on the front. And now I feel the need to “create”. What does that even mean? What am I supposed to create? What am I supposed to do? I don’t understand. Is this notebook supposed to inspire my artistic feelings? Is this notebook supposed to give me a place to express my feelings? Is this notebook supposed to be the window to my soul? What in the world am I supposed to “create”, and why in the world did I buy this blank notebook?

The Pro:

I love blank notebooks, and so I buy them. Blank notebooks make me happy. I am on a regular basis drawn to blank notebooks, and I have no idea why. I think it has something to do with looking at all those empty pages, knowing that you can put down anything you want, knowing that it would be completely personal and that no one could take that blank notebook away. Maybe I love blank notebooks, because really great people had blank notebooks. Maybe I love blank notebooks because diaries fascinate me, and diaries always seem to be written, in what was at one time, a blank notebook. Maybe I like blank notebooks, because when I look back at them I see what I put there. What I filled those blank notebooks with. I love re-reading written conversations. I love looking at what I scribbled out and trying to figure out what the scribbled out words are. I love blank notebooks, and of course I bought this blank notebook.

The Solution:

I will lay this blank notebook aside, and let it sit in my room. A few weeks from now, I’ll need a blank piece of paper and I’ll pull it from the blank notebook. The notebook looses some of its perfection. A few weeks from now I’ll move it to another place, and its end will get bent. The notebook looses some more of its perfection. This process will continue until I decide to do something with this notebook, and I will. I don’t know what it will be yet, and I doubt that I’ll know what it will be until its happening. I think I love blank notebooks, because they give you a feeling of true freedom. The powerful feeling that you can do whatever you want to do to that page. Whatever you put down in that blank notebook is now inescapably and irretrievably yours. It’s a freedom of a sort, and after all, isn’t true freedom what every human wants? And isn’t the ability to express that freedom all we as humans should ever need? (don’t answer that Americans)
I think I hate blank notebooks because they are irretrievably yours. You can’t get away from what you put down. Yes, you can scribble, burn and destroy the papers, but you never destroy the ideas that were put into shape and substance (no dystopian novel references please). I know that feelings and thoughts can float around in your mind, but they only become cemented once you put them down in hard copy form. Phrases and words can be moving around, but they make much more sense when you see them lying in front of you. I don’t know what I’ll put in my notebook yet. I might draw, (although all my pictures are horrible) I might write short stories, (fascinating form of literature), I might write poetry, (I’m reading all of Shakespeare’s sonnets right now, they are incredible), I might draw lots and lots of doodles (nothing suitable to stick in parentheses here), all of these fascinating possibilities lie before my blank notebook and me. And I have no idea which one I’ll choose.