Messages to nobody in particular

See? I can do this. I’m stronger than you think, really I am. It’s a ques­tion of how you use peri­ods of unplanned solitude. Since I have recently become tired of try­ing to seek out dis­trac­tions where none are to be found, I decided to use up some time in the pur­suit of clear­ing out my head.

Let’s be hon­est — it’s less about clear­ing and more about judi­cious rearrange­ment of arte­facts. Dust­ing shelves, cram­ming boxes full of junk and, as ever, hoard­ing. That kind of thing.

I bought four new note­books early yes­ter­day after­noon. The till oper­ator in WH Smith looked at me a little strangely, as if buy­ing four identical note­books was some­how not nor­mal; I smiled back, pos­sibly in an attempt to reas­sure her that, yes, it was entirely nor­mal. By mid-afternoon today I’d filled three-quarters of one note­book — to be fair, my writ­ing was big and scrawled and messy, but it was still seventy-five per cent of a note­book, which is pretty impress­ive even by my wordy stand­ards. I also found myself draw­ing dia­grams — flow-chart style dia­grams seem to be a recent addi­tion to my scribbles — which helped fill up the pages.

I talked to an old man in the park, mainly because he sat down on the bench beside me and asked what I was writ­ing. I believe that I might have been so deep in con­cen­tra­tion that the tip of my tongue was pok­ing out of my mouth. That tends to get noticed. Awful habit. I was going to answer the gentleman’s ques­tion, pos­sibly only semi-truthfully, but then he star­ted talk­ing about weep­ing wil­lows and I felt more com­fort­able with that topic of con­ver­sa­tion. He talked — well, rambled — and I listened. I did men­tion that I par­tic­u­larly like the weep­ing wil­low because it’s the first tree I remem­ber from my child­hood, but I don’t think he heard.

Early this after­noon, dur­ing the pre­dict­ably stil­ted phone con­ver­sa­tion that now takes place more or less every Sunday after­noon, I con­sidered telling the per­son on the other end of the line that I had been frantic­ally scrib­bling in a note­book, but I didn’t think he would be impressed. The prob­lem with these phone calls — I would call them chats, but that some­how doesn’t describe them accur­ately — is that I keep want­ing to say highly inap­pro­pri­ate things to him, and have to stop myself. You can’t go try­ing to build bridges if you keep insist on blow­ing up a length of it with a small stock of explos­ive charges. Yet I might also have to face the fact that this is a doomed con­struc­tion pro­ject that I’ll soon wish I had never embarked upon.

The prob­lem is that as soon I put one box back on the shelf, I acci­dent­ally knock another one to the ground and spill the con­tents every­where. And there does seem to be a never-ending stock of boxes, sadly.

Did some­body say some­thing about dis­trac­tions? Sorry, I didn’t hear. I was too busy scrib­bling in my note­book, even though such an activ­ity might not be con­sidered healthy.

Were you one of those chil­dren who was always accused of spend­ing too much time in his or her own little world? Do we ever grow out of that habit? I don’t think we do, not com­pletely. But I just wanted to show you — and show me — that I can do this. I’m stronger than you think. Really I am.

(Un)sources: Sun, trees, aim­less­ness, note­books and the pen­ul­tim­ate pen in my pack of ten Berol rollerballs; Shoot­ing the Past (video); African Sanc­tus (CD); Sangam (CD); The Green Fields of Forever­land (CD); Erik Satie (CD); Encyc­lo­pae­dia of Snow (book); Timo­leon Vieta Come Home (book).

I’m sorry. That didn’t appear to be a web­log entry.