I sit down to write and open my notebook at random. I read the following:
Emotions are the first language we learn.
I don't know when I wrote it, but when I re-read it I had the feeling that it had always been here, with me, that it had never left me, even though it had a life of its own.
Words have different lives and meanings, depending on who writes them and who reads them. For example, that sentence made me imagine a baby interacting with its mother, but I'm sure that each reader interpreted it differently. It depends on the individual's imagery.
My notebooks are very important to me.
They're a kind of wellspring of creativity, and it's through them that I express it. I also use them, like today, to receive creative input.
I write by hand almost every day in my notebooks. I keep them. I don't intend to make them into a kind of diary, or even a collection of notes. I also take a lot of photographs, but I have no intention of being a photographer or publishing photo books. I consider writing to be a kind of photography, in the sense that writing is like photographing thoughts.
Generally, the notes in my notebook are undated.
They are a kind of history without time.
The notes I write always belong to two different dimensions, in that they belong to the time I write them and the time I re-read them. Therefore, they are not past, present or future, and as a consequence, they don't have a guiding line. They are independent, but there is something that connects them. They are fragments.
However, when I re-read them I feel that they have a hidden temporal logic. I can discover who I was at the time I wrote them. They're like postcards from the past. They remain dormant until I reread them. They're like emotions travelling through time, continually sending out their signals.
Although they are undated, my notes are linked and connected by a kind of invisible thread. Even if they were typed, if I were to read them many years from now, I would know that I was the one who wrote them. Like this one:
Memory is what's left of the world inside me.
When I re-read it, I know that this is my voice, the tone with which I think and write, it is my identity transcribed into words.
My notes belong to me, they're like pieces of me engraved on sheets of paper. When I write them, I care more about the idea than the form. Nor do I have a specific reason for writing them. Adding that concern would just be a subtle way of trying to control the world, and a way of destroying the creative process.
My notes are like my emotions. They are private property, personal and non-transferable. They don't have time, they don't need a logic or a reason. But somehow they have a hidden meaning, something that unifies them and gives them meaning.
That's what I'm looking for when I write: Meaning.
As I wrote in one of my last notes:
If you close your eyes while walking towards the sun, you will continue to perceive the sun. You don't need to see certain things, just close your eyes and you'll feel them, because feeling is like seeing within.
My notes have no time or reason to be written or read. They're just my way of playing with my thoughts.
Here are other ways I find to play with my thoughts:
I'm always fascinated by people who can keep a journal or a diary for long periods of time.
I was never able to do it. I tried Morning Pages and Commonplace Journals, but always got bored with my own thinking. Alas.
Love the idea of the different dimensions: the time that you write them and the time that you read them...so much happens in between, doesn't it?