What is a note book anyway? Um, a collection of notes? Stitched together to make a book? If a writer scribbles what the clouds are doing that day, or records the times of dental appointments, then does the notebook become a diary? Or a journal?
If any book contains a collection of thoughts, appointments, ambitions, wonderings, ideas, regrets, fantasies, things to do, things we wish we hadn't done, then what is it, this chaotic little note book-diary-journal object?
The whole matter becomes a lot more complicated when we throw in another person, besides the actual writer. When this unbidden reader casually picks up this note book-diary-journal object, what happens then?
Ha! Did I give permission for you to transgress my covers to explore my dental appointments? But maybe I (secretly) want my words to be read. You can share my pain. Or should I destroy the object-book now, forever never-to-be-read, just in case?
Maybe the solution to uninvited reading is to simply write consciously - anticipating all the words that might be read. And I should control the context now.
So I must record all dental appointments strictly in the appointments calendar. Keep my lists of doable ambitions (paint the gates / reorganise stationery drawer) clearly separate from my scrawled wonderings for improbable projects (build conservatory from stuff I find at the tip / trek Iceland at midnight). These ambitious meanderings, reminding myself to research Iceland and wood junk, I should store inside 'Stream of conscious Jumble Book'.
But surely this travels against the slip-stream of what it is to be human.
My visit to the dentist might spark off my intention to explore Iceland (only at night), for which I need to doodle the shape of Iceland, add arrows, some dates, and a few question marks. My dedication to recording rain-laden clouds might set me thinking about all the people who contribute weather maps and observations. All around the world. Perhaps I could be one of them. I jot down another Unlikely Thing I'll Do: Build a Weather Station.
If I mix it all up in my note book (which I do, frankly) then I've transgressed all boundaries myself, showing I'm just another happily messy human reaching for a piece of paper and a pen. How can I then complain against my unbidden reader, poking their nose between my covers, simply to satisfy their passing curiosity?
I became a little fixated on these merry-go-round thoughts around the time I read about Nepantla - the who-we-are when we are at borders.
Bumping up against our limits, exploring the limits of the other, then off we go, we're unstoppable in what might be. We're suddenly able to reimagine ourselves, looking over those fine lines at borders - one foot on any side - where other things are possible. It's chaos. But it's creative chaos. And I believe we need it: we seek it out, in order to show ourselves what it is to be human.
So if you do read my note book, you're welcome/not welcome. It's private/not private. And you're probably human too, you nosy parker. Just like the rest of us. Going where we shouldn't, finding out what we oughtn't, spilling ideas on papers. Doodling, scribbling, drawing, writing to-do lists and reminders, adventuring into those lands where we can stir realities into imaginings; becoming less ourselves and more as others, turning the pages to conceal and reveal, all the time while knowing, and wondering, what's in your note book?
