I just confronted one of my many lands of random notebooks, scraps of papers, and scribbled chaos.
Amongst the rubble I found a small, calculator-sized notebook that flips open along the top. It is coated in green cloth, and I can't remember if I bought it like that or I made it like that (I have a thing for cloth-covered notebooks). Holding it, I feel like a detective taking notes in a psychedelic murder mystery.
The notebook is filled with a lot of to-do lists, future mixed tapes, mental thoughts about projects or papers I was working on, and random phone numbers. I have a habit of carrying around very small notebooks for such purposes. Occasionally I feel particularly inspired and write a little creative piece - usually no more than three or four lines.
I flipped open to a random page and found something I wrote when I was 18:
"They were the last lovers in New York City - the first in the world - and their passion was inefficient and kept no savings account. They spent it like Texans."
I almost always remember where I was and what I was thinking at the time of a writing any particular phrase, paragraph, paper, or story. I consider this fortunate, because that way, no matter how bad the writing is, at least I have the associated memory to distract me. I have absolutely no recollection of ever having written this, nor from where it came. Yet it is most certainly my handwriting. I find this very unsettling. It's like reading one of my own sentences objectively for the first time. Cringe.
; "Sun River 5K")
; "Catching fish")
That is a great discovery. A few years ago I discovered a small book of my thoughts and they provided illumination - and embarassment - to me.
I've had that happen to me, too. It is disturbing. Stranger still is when the handwriting is your 'upset' handwriting and you don't remember writing it, let alone being upset.
It's the luckiest thing to be able to see something of yours for the first time. And I think it's a great line.