Monday, February 1, 2010

January Review, Scrambled Eggs-Brain



Note to self: stop taking ten-day or longer sojourns from blogging. I like it here. It's Februaryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

I have a little black moleskine notebook for each class. Not the fancy bound spined ones, just the smaller ones (Lanee). They're about $5 apiece in my campus bookstore, but it's worth spending a little more because the notebooks are so pretty that they cry out to be written in, thus, I actually take a very respectable amount of very well-organized notes in them. Also, I bought a pack of those squishier-inked Pilot G-2 pens in a nice forest green, which just looks beautiful on the yellower pages of these moleskins. I jump to take notes each day.

It's really worked out, this whole idea. At least for the first month of school. I surprised myself, and hope I continue to do so.
I try not to make any of them my journal, though, try to keep doodles to a minimum and lists of people and facewash products I need to buy and small, paragraph-sized rants about my life out of them. That way they don't turn into half-used journals like I already have several piles of. Who doesn't have those piles? I have piles and piles and piles. Journals with moons on the front and hand-pressed Indian paper on the insides and even some of the ones with locks and keys you could buy at booksales in elementary school. Many wasted journals that could have been used by small children somewhere to learn their math instead of being cast aside by me after several weeks of their Newness had gone by.

One of the moleskines has crept into being my journal though. Halfway.
It's the one for my postmodern lit class, OK? It's not for Living Prophets or History of Psychology or Psychology in Film or Math Death. If any notebook is allowed to be emo, it's a postmodern lit notebook filled otherwise with notes about war books and What Is Identity and PTSD and caste systems and the Catholic church and its system of filthy filthy arbitrary power.

OK?
Ok.
In this notebook, between scribbles like "DECONSTRUCTIONISM: RESPONSIBLE ETHICAL RELITAVISM" and "Freud who said it was helpful to talk about your problems? Huh? Huh?" and "NARRATIVE WESTERN PHILOSOPHY PLATO CAVE->rationality culture spirituality above the line nature below hmmmmmm The cave the cave the cave the allegory the big scary shadows" I write things about my feelings. Like you do in a journal. Like it's kind of a journal. I make sure (as my new, impeccably organized self) to separate journaly things from real relative grownup learning. I bullet everything I write about my life and leave everything note-worthy not bulleted. This seems opposite, but hey, I can't go back on it now.

When I'm bulleting instead of paragraphing or sentencing like a regular person, it seems that very strange things come out. Maybe a better representation of the way I think, though.

This is all working out fine and grand, but sometimes I go back to view my bullets and just get confused because I seem to have seven different brains all working at a mile a minute, and about really, really weird unimportant things. See an assortment of my month in fragments below.

  • "people with yellow in their eyes Romney"
  • "Perhaps in my magic closet that I will have someday!"
  • "how do people my age know so much? I don't know wars and dates and things Someday I'll know more "
  • "Why doesn't anybody else's bookbag smell like stale gum like mine does? Am I more absorbent? Or my bag I mean"
  • "things smell better when it's warmer outside. In the winter you can't even smell things."
  • "cranium size is very important to me. Not intelligence--actually the size of someone's actual head. I can tell when I'm gripping the back of your head to kiss you"
  • "is it better to lie than to tell the truth when you know because of their personality they'll just distrust the truth and your motives anyway? They're not going to believe me even if I tell the truth"
  • "it's awesome when you find yourself picking up habits from the people you know, like the disgusting way they eat string cheese. Check. I do it."
  • "this dude just sat at my table and smelled so good, like a combo of the clean lobby of a building, and detergent, and rootbeer"
  • "who needs mystery anyways? I need mystery, like people who are shady"
  • "no money"
  • "now you KNOW a guy who brings a plate to campus to dump his tupperware onto is just that much more civilized than the rest of us. Who is this guy"
  • "I love chocolate pudding. I also love the color teal and calzones man I love those pepperoni calzones!"
These moleskines just seem to inspire my already hoppy brain to turn into a regular fidgeter.

Happy Brain-Hopping Monday, Happy February. February is a beautiful month and I am glad we are in it.

Tell me you have things like these bullets written in the margins of your planner, or on napkins, or at least in your brains? And look at these green trees again and feel a little spring a little early if you want.

7 comments:

Liesl said...

I agree with you about the smelling thing. The only thing I smell in winter (come to think about it, it's probably a good thing since most things are dead anyway and everybody knows death smells like, well, death)is cold air. And while I enjoy that feeling of cold air and seeing my breath and walking around breathing more heavily than usual, nothing excites me so much as the smell of spring. Where spring is literally in the air, like Febreze only more fresh, if that's even possible. And then it starts to smell like summer. And then fall. And every time I smell a new smell, I get ridiculously excited and practically wet my pants. It is then I go to a public restroom and squeal incessantly while waiting for a stall, although that might be more because I GOTTA GO instead of how excited I am. Maybe both.

brooke said...

So, since my brother already revealed me, I guess it's alright to admit in a real alive comment that I blogstalk you, and that I'm going to become a (gulp) public follower.

And that I absolutely adore the words that come from your scrambled eggs brain.
Thanks for writing.

Michelle said...

yay!!!! you're back!

Lisa said...

I have things like bullets written everywhere in my life. Like, I think I have four or five bullet lists on my desk this very minute. Plus several more in several half-finished journals all over my house and apartment. Yes, I definitely do bullet lists.

Casey T. said...

you ever take a 10 day sonjourn again and i will fly to Ut and beat your butt to a computer with you moleskin. K, love you:)

Tracy said...

Yes I do. And you're right, if your going to make side comments in any class, that's the one to do it in. It's just so easy.

MedSchoolWife said...

Brad reading over my shoulder while I read your blog: "That girl is kind of scatter-brained."

Me: "Hunny. That's the point."