The Notebook

I keep a notebook. I call it the spittoon. It's full of the scattershot ramblings I have running through my head. I started keeping it about eight or nine years ago when I had so much chatter in my head it was destroying me! I thought I would have to construct my own guillotine and then use it on myself in order to have peace. A friend of mine suggested I instead scribble down the noise, and I did and continue to, to this day. I got hooked.

I found that forming a sentence, even a crazy one, helped organize my tornado-spun thoughts. To put together a sentence, even a bad ungrammatical one, the spin has to form a line so you have one word following the next: "Okay guys get in line, single file." The notebook writing is much less scary than the high winds in my head. The sentences go in, one after the other, into the spittoon. It's a psycho-linguistic gestalt home remedy.

At first the writing saved me from having to make my own guillotine. Although I still have those days, now the writing is the churning and aerating of the soil, preparing me for my artistic day. I am so grateful for my simple friend, pen and paper.