Scribbles and Margins

Even though it may not seem like it, the times wherein I have the opportunity to write – simply write! – for my own pleasure, for the sheer love of it, have been getting fewer and fewer as the days go by. It used to be that I had the time and the energy skip over to the nearest coffee shop (Starbucks is a preference, of course) with a pretty hard bound brown paper journal and my trusty fountain pen with brown ink. But now, I realize that it's been an entire year since I had the opportunity, much less the inclination to indulge in that. I'm rather saddened to discover that while I do on occasion type up updates and post them on my online journal, I no longer write the way I used to – and I used to write ever so beautifully.

This entire train of thought began last Saturday, when we were digging up a whole bunch of stuff at home because my mother wanted to sort through her clothes and we were going to buy new wooden closets for me and my sister. Cleaning out closets had always been a nostalgic activity for me, and, as I carefully boxed up the contents of my old closet, I rediscovered the old hardbound notebooks that I used to carry around and cover with fountain pen ink as I sipped my tall hazelnut latte on a comfortable plush chair in a fairly quiet coffee place. I no longer drink coffee, I realized; my stomach condition demands that I stick to tea, preferably green tea latte so that there would be no massively major upheaval of my gastrointestinal system. I also realized how long it had been since I last stopped thinking about what I was writing, last stopped pressing the backspace button, selecting entire passages of my life and pushing them out of my life with the delete button.

My handwriting was never beautiful, and I remember that I used to think that most of my ramblings and scribblings on those brown pages (I loved to imagine that they were papyrus, or any other special paper that poets and philosophers used to write on), would never compare to what had been written in centuries past. Then again, I fancy that my letters were not quite as studied as letters were expected to be in the past, and I suppose the honesty of the curves of my cursives do hold some inexplicable charm that is almost completely disconnected from the practically pretentious oblivious meanings of my first personal essays.

I read through what I had once written, moving my eyes fluidly over lines and gaps and spaces and jumps and thoughts that I will likely never have again, and I realized with more than a bit of surprise that as time progressed my thoughts had changed over the many months of my writing in those notebooks using that pen, relying on the flow of that ink. The meaning of the words began to reflect with the honesty of my letters, as if the act of seeing my own writing had inspired me to tap into my soul and trust what it was trying to say rather than what my own thoughts were trying to say (often, my thoughts edit, abridge, or exaggerate whatever it is I truly want to say). I was almost struck speechless at the revelation that I just may have lost that definite sense of self when I had chosen to let go of this habit, pushing it to the margins in favor of placing my work at the center of the page.

The idea that the activity I had so loved before bearing the brunt of a responsible life having fallen off the proverbial book of my life was, at that point, equal parts terrifying and hilarious. I closed the last of the old hard-bound journals covered in essays, words, phrases and poems; it went into the brown box, and I wondered whether I should keep my memories in a place where they would be less likely forgotten. I also wondered how honest I had been these past few months, with all my disclaimers and edits in my thoughts, working more like a word processor than a human mind.

I'm swinging by the bookstore later, I suppose, and buy a new notebook, as well as brown ink refills. And maybe some Earl Grey tea will do the trick as well.