I dunno what it is about blank books, all nicely bound with pretty covers in cloth or leather or sometimes cork or fancy paper.  And I dunno what it is about people who use words that make other people buy us these blank books.  I guess they figure we need someplace to keep them.

Sleep MaskI probably own at least half a dozen of these things, all of which, I’ve recently discovered, have the first ten pages filled in, usually with something annoyingly boring and un-wordless-book-worthy, such as dreams.  It’s somewhat interesting to read a dream that was so horrible, so beautiful, so damned meaningful at one time that I felt the need to write it down.  But it’s also like reading a recipe with ingredients I’ve never heard of.  You’re sure if someone bothered to write down a recipe, it’s something good, but if you don’t know what a chizzywhoot is, you really aren’t sure what it’s going to taste like.

I was looking for a blank book recently, because I had an idea for things to write in one that wasn’t actually lame.  Since all of my blank books had the first ten pages taken, my efforts were temporarily stymied, and this case of the heebies that Englebert Ichabod, the reknowned heebie surgeon, operated on last week has thus far kept me indoors.  I’ll figure something out, no fear!

But the point is I was looking for a blank book, and I happened upon one for which the first ten pages were devoted to 1996.  Good grief.  Well I can now confirm, it’s true…. if you run into your past self, it does cause a rift in the space time continuum.  I also ran into the term <bg> which was funny, because that alone dated the document from BSA (Before the Smiley Age) although it’s much funnier than I actually wrote <bg> in a freaking journal.  I guess I thought future me would need to know I had been grinning.

I’ve never been very good at journal upkeep.  On the news recently they did a human interest story (as opposed to what?  caterpillar interest?) on this guy that had spent something like 40 years cataloging his life in 15 minute increments, writing down everything he did from peeing to dreaming, to um, writing in his journal.  According to his wife, he got up often in the middle of the night to write in his journal, which now holds the world record as the most tedious document ever or some such as that.   My hubby saw this story and couldn’t believe someone would do such a thing.  No, no, I replied…I’ve read blogs like that.

In the past I’ve always had trouble with the idea of throwing blank books away.  I don’t like throwing any books away, actually, unless I consider the writing so bad that it would be a bad-karma-inducing event to allow another human being to endure it.  But blank books even more so, I suppose because they imply so much potential.  But after meeting 1996 me, I think I have a date with the shredder.  Some things just don’t need to be remembered.

Similarly Bitter Posts