Chapter I: Yellow Notebook

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Story Writing
NaNoWriMo: Chapter I

Yellow Notebook


Everyone has opinions about writing: what is glorious, life changing, what is shit. Popular culture tells us we can learn anything is we find the right written manual. Attempting to get a liberal arts education is like being a mountain climber, scaling mountains of past thought, in book form of course, eating shitty food, not sleeping enough, hoping to emerge on an unknown peek to newfound world fame.

Some say write what you know. Write what you don't know. Be plot driven. Character development. Set the scene. Some advise to steer clear of the whole thing, prefeering their prepackaged television reality.

In kindergarten, I always sat at the special table. At least that's what I called it. : Special in the very best way possible. When you walked into the door of Sunny Side Up Kindergarten and Day Care, there was a row of book shelves to the right of the make-shift hallway, crammed with the paraphenalia of childhood: books, blocks, blankets, puzzles, parkas, and hand-drawn pictures of the highest quality. A few feet down, there was an alcove near the big picture window that looked over the emense yard. A few feet farther, the bookshelves fell away, opening into the kindergarten room, leaving the walker two steps from another hallway leading to the rest of the Future of the World, in descending age order. Babies were the very back of the converted Victorian House.

But who are these writers? These people that have the awesome task of recording the present for the future, for providing guidance, humor, insight to the world we live it. What makes a classic? A NYT bestseller? Oprah's Book Club? What makes some books grab you by the heart, the throat, the life -- and refuse to let go. Others get mentally grouped as "generic fiction" and forgotten, found again in the free book box outside Powell's.

Every morning, we had to journal. I remember my digging my yellow spiral out of the heap, running to the table by the window on my stubby toddler legs, waiting for the day's assignment, my mind racing.
What were you for Halloween?
What's your favorite thing to do with you Daddy?

Since I and whatever friends were able to join me couldn't see the date written on the board, Ms. Katie would bring us a slip of paper to situate us in time. Fat pencil in hand, I would concentrate on trying to make the letters perfect -- towering Ns for cold Novembers, looping Js for January -- always my favorite, festive Ys for sunny Mays. I watched the seasons change as surely as the retirement of my favorite pink snow suit after the first big melt.

Each day had a topic to "write" about, our literary exercise consisting mainly of, shall we say, a more picturesque portrayal. Yet, at the end of our morning contemplation routine, Ms. Joanne would come over and ask us about our drawings, and write subtitles, Titles, commentary, descriptions on our daily masterpieces. Sometimes, if I was extra adorable, Ms. Joanne would write my request -- even then a bit wordy and sometimes purposely obtuse -- on the slip near the date, allowing me to write myself.

My signature is proudly under the proclamations I wrote myself.

To this day, I still love to watch my hands form letters, fly over keys, hold the paint brush, disembodying myself from the words being produced instead focusing on the process itself.

My signature still looks the same. Exactly. The. Same.

And by God, how do Writers, capital W, do it without being trite, cliche, escape entrapment in the discarded journal of every teenage girl who thought, one day, I'll tell the truth, I'll write a book?

Can I?

When I moved out, my mother loosened her annal retentive grip on my life just enough to give me precious vestiges of the Life of Her Only Child, with strict warning that if I fucked these memories up (like I do with everything, right Mom?) I would one day be sorry. I didn't really listen, partially because I've heard it all before and still think most of it blatant slander of my good name, but also because I spotted it.

Again, I dug out the now battered, still holy yellow notebook, abounding with dreams, ideas, words, signatures of me.

Upon rereading the masterpiece, I discovered that we're all very much the same as we were at the age of 6. Maybe the edges get blurred, sharpened, extended but the secrets of the heart, desires, goal, life view: a lot of that solidifies at 6 between naps and snack time.
At least that's how it is for me. It's all there in the Yellow Notebook.

"If you would stop and notice how we number everyday, but allow the many moments left uncounted slip away. You don't have to count them, just enjoy them one by one, and things will take a different hue and sparkle in the sun."

Phish seems to have some advice for my nostalgic ass.
A Point? Yes, I swear I have one.

I want to be a writer. Always have. I''m the dock keeper of unique harbor full of secret desires. I think one day, someone will publish my journals, kidding myself that many people read this very blog. You know how at the bottom of long editions of Kant, Rousseau, anything old and highly studied really -- there are miles of tiny type talking about nothing in particular, needing a code to fully decipher the abundance of abreviations. There you'll find it: numbers and dates saying that this this bit of wisdom, insight, glory came from the personal correspondences of Mr. Genuis to Mr. History Forgot. One day, that'll happen to me, to me, to me whisper the tiny waves that lap the quite boats in my harbor.

What better place to be self indulgent, then Paris.
What month better suited for contemplation of personal history the November.
Some may say that I'm too young to write a Memoir, or a travelogue of any worth, of lasting integrity. And they may be right.

Let's see, shall we?