Day 421, May 12, 2021
The Ending and Beginning
Tonight's soundtrack: V.S.O.P. II, Umbria, 1983
Yesterday, I wrote in the last page of a notebook. I've been writing at least a page a every weekday morning in this red notebook since March 6, 2020. It is the thing I do as I eat my bowl of cereal or bagel, smoothie, and coffee. And since January 14th, I've been working on the first draft of a short story, one page at a time. It has been strange that both the story and notebook petered out at the same time. I wonder if I was subconsciously aware of the paucity of pages as I neared the end.
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| Water Study II |
Finishing a notebook is always bittersweet for me. It is like finishing a sleeve of cookies or the last ice cream bar in the freezer. Notable in its accomplishment, but then there is the palatable absence because a notebook becomes a familiar thing, something with a consistent heft and texture in the palm.
I have a whole collection of notebooks in my basement. Most are filled with poetry, some are travel notes, some are filled with quotes transcribed from whatever I happened to be reading at the time. When I was in graduate school, I often found the best way to study an author's writing was to copy down the stanza, phrase, or paragraph by hand, then you could really understand how they were constructing images or sentences. I still try to copy down quotes, particularly if I will be teaching the book or guiding a reading group, but usually I type it into the computer.
This morning I wrote in the first page of a new notebook and it feels uncertain and unfamiliar, like I'm not quite sure I can commit to it yet. The notebook came from my reserve pile of blank notebooks. It is not the normal type I would have picked out at the bookstore, so it will take a little while to adjust to. The pages feel different in my hand and turn with perforations near the binding. The line spacing seems odd.
For the first time in months I wrote something more akin to poetry than prose, which is how I had been starting my mornings for the past many years. Too many years when I try to count. It is embarrassing that I have so much raw material that I have not shaped into a structure or form yet. It belies a lack of discipline.
More pressing, in the short-term, is what to do with the partially formed story. I think I will have to carve out some time to turn to that project. Maybe fiction can be one of my weekend mornings, or both if I can finish my other weekend endeavors. How do we find time in the day to fit all the things we want to be doing?
I suppose, I have been producing all these years with the idea that eventually I will be able to work my way back through time and pick out pieces to revise and shape, and maybe at that time volumes will emerge.
But for now, I miss my characters, who feel like friends who have accompanied me for several months as they emerged and grew on the page. I wonder if going back to the beginning will bring them back to life?
I suppose we shall see.
Take care and be well,
Leo
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| Water Study III |
From Our Friends:
From the Vermont Studio Center:
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