Periodically, I collect the stray notebooks from around my home into one centrally-located pile. I flip through the pages of each notebook. I get into a comfortable position and read through each page of each book, ripping out the 'to do' lists that have long since been done. Sometimes those lists of ideas were tasks I had no intention of ever doing at the time I wrote them down but in the writing of the list I had the opportunity to set it onto paper, to feel accomplished, to feel on top of.
I've also found during these paper housekeeping times that I will discover important things that were worth noting, things I have neglected to properly complete. I find passwords, telephone numbers, changes of addresses, quotes I hear and want to remember, bank balances, dreamy getaway ideas, the instructions and requirements given me by the lady at the Medicaid office.
I also find the occasional piece of writing I've started and have abandoned unfinished. They're usually skeleton-like in form, a few words connected together by swoops and swings of a ballpoint pen, with miscellaneous jottings and doodles obliterating the margins.
Below is one such old entry. I wish now that I would have noted the date, or what in the world I was trying to sort out, or at least
some kind of indication that I hadn't temporarily lost my mind (or simply, that I felt I had). I'm making a concentrated effort when I write now to jot those kinds of notes that might serve later as a road map to where I was when I lost myself.
I don't expect anyone who isn't me to have fun picking through the vault, so please know I'll completely understand if these snippets seem dumb or disconnected or weird (frankly, I think they are too, just a little bit). I'll understand if you want to get out while you can. I really do get it. On the other hand, I am also finding myself existentially stuck at the moment and I think I might help myself get un-stuck by hanging out with myself in this way. Maybe I'll find the missing pieces. Maybe I'll reconnect what has come undone. Maybe I'll confirm what I already know.
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I wish to speak. Music exists to say things that words cannot say, which is why it is not entirely human. You've found out that music is not for kings?
I've found out it is for God.
You're wrong. God can speak.For the ear?
Things I cannot speak of are not for the ear.
For gold? For glory? For silence?
Silence is just the opposite of language.
For the rival musicians? For love?
No.For love's sorrows?
No.For abandonment?
No, no.For a wafer offered to the invisible?
Not even. What is a wafer? You can see it, you can taste it, you can eat it. It's nothing.
I don't know any more, sir. I don't know any more. I think one has to leave a glass for the dead.
You're getting closer.A refreshment for those who've run out of words. For lost childhood, to muffle the hammering of shoemakers, for the time before we were born, before we breathed, or saw light.
Come, they told me
