There is something redemptive about notebooks. I don't mean jot pads or journals. I mean those amply illustrated records of existence that I have kept religiously for some five years now, using not only the widest range of writing and drawing implements imaginable but plentiful amounts of double-sided tape as well. These books contain all kinds of things besides writing and illustrations: photos, bills, stickers, real and reproduced artworks, clippings, postcards, letters, printouts of web pages and miniature copies of newspaper and magazine articles, little paper pockets housing secret messages... anything that might serve as a reminder of a particular state of being, especially one induced by a journey, so long as the memento is sufficiently two-dimensional to rest comfortably between the covers of a book.
Post-modern illustrated manuscripts recalling the great Perso-Mongol tradition in which the visual, calligraphic and literary arts combine, my notebooks contain a symbolic portrait of the world around me - one that suggests, falsely, that I am able to hold on to what happens to me and somehow keep it alive. But since I seldom actually look at one once I am done with it, it seems they are less about posterity than a deeper need.
Too many times, by now, people have observed me, totally absorbed in one of those time-proof creations - with scissors, tape and countless bits and bobs finding their way in and out of the book - and they have remarked with varying degrees of conviction that I have a problem. "It's just not normal," my best friend once broke out, "the amount of time you spend on those things." I had to tell him that I was hurt by the fact that he of all people should not understand. Now, I know I have many problems - it would surprise me, too, if I was to discover that I am totally normal - but notebooks are certainly not one of those problems. And as far as normality goes, they have been more of a help than an obstacle. In some ways, indeed, the amount of time I spend on notebooks has functioned like therapy or sport - endorphins of the mind.
I started keeping them following the death of my father. I had entered into an existential black hole in which everything seemed so pointlessly fleeting, so scary and absurd that I could only get a grip by restricting my consciousness to an A5 sheet of paper. But as I got over my grief and life started making sense again, I could not let go of the practise. Yes, OK, I am addicted to notebooks... Sometimes I wonder if it will be they who will vouch for me before God on the day of judgement, displaying ample proof that, whatever else I ended up doing, I really did mean well.
