notebook notes

I’d like to take a moment of your time… and I have. Now you can go back to doing whatever you were doing before you read this.

Passing an old man on the walkway, each of us lets his unbuttoned jacket billow in the wind.

A pair of small white dogs – highland terriers – doing nothing but being small dogs. I should take their lead.

Blackbirds and thrushes benefit from our lawns and gardens. Sparrows are our café companions. But kingfishers have absolutely no need for us.

Two Mormons visited today. They asked me if I wanted to come to God. As a response I quoted Mirabai, ‘I have felt the swaying of the elephant’s shoulders and now you want me to climb onto a jackass?’

As the tide goes out, fish turn into fossils.

Dr. Mabuse Drive (misread sign). I wonder if Fritz Lang lives on this street?

‘So much waiting eventually turns one into a waiting room’. Jean Cocteau

Things I have stolen today: a bottle of soy sauce, a stuffed pigeon, an assortment of cufflinks.

After a year the empty elephant enclosure still smells of elephants.

On a winter’s day, when the sun comes up, mist billows over the edge of a trampoline.

Produce some allusive variations.

A dialogue? No, a double diary. The writing process involves two diaries and proceeds by alternating passages from each. One diary is my own, the other written by a character I’ve created.

The hateful sound of a suburban chainsaw (another tree comes down).

‘Perseverance is where the gods dwell’. Peruvian saying

Of her husband all that could be said was that he lowered his eyes and sank into his teacup.

They reached a mutual misunderstanding based on mistrust and misinformation.

I have spider-thoughts; they’re all somewhat tenuous.

The wild excesses of our youth were not so wild, and we were not so young.

When the storm has passed, the raindrops clinging to the handles of the wheelie bins glitter like jewels.

‘Precision drone strike’. From now on ‘drone strike’ must always be qualified by ‘precision’.

As a young man he loved his bed. He was constantly on the move, with so much to do, and to be able to lie in bed and fall asleep was a luxury…. As an old man he hated his bed. It was always waiting for him. He spent long hours stretched out in that bed, during the day and the night, with his eyes wide open.

A cloud carries us across the bridge.

‘The charm of the table is to find yourself at it’. Francis Ponge

The table waits and the waiter waits on the table. Orders are taken. Someone knocks over a bottle of soy sauce. The sauce stains the tabletop. But the table can take it. The waiter, tight-lipped, wipes away the sauce…. Patient table, stoic table.

note

As a writer I carry a notebook around with me at all times. The fragments shown are from my current notebook. Some may find their way into a poem, a song, or a story.