Notebooks

September 16, 2020

 

I keep four different notebooks. They are all Muji unlined spiral books of different sizes. I mostly prefer the beige covers for my personal journal, so I can draw on them if I want, and black for the other stuff. I like B5 notebooks, but some things just go into A5, don’t they? For long I have wanted to reduce the number of notebooks and bring them together in just one—the ONE book I see in films that deep inspiring people put all their thoughts into—but something resists this move and I continue on with four.

 

One of my books is my personal journal. It has dreams, the not quite morning pages, the reflections on puzzling behaviours and interactions from the previous day, emotions—the shame, the guilt, the anger I feel about something or someone—my desires, rough daily schedules, reminders etc. 

 

The second is the place I write about thoughts on political events I feel strongly about, books I read, and research about both and other things that catch my mind. Bits of fiction, plots and characters mostly, that emerge from these thoughts and curiosities. It also contains memories from my past—a compost heap of sorts to use Natalie Goldberg’s term. 

 

The third book I use for courses I do, writing exercises and similar explorations.  

 

The last I use to write thoughts about the novel in progress. This one had not been opened for a while. 

 

I also have a very tiny diary to record appointments and a karate book where I make notes of learning—mostly techniques but sometimes wisdom, and a sketch book. The list grows. I thought I was the only crazy that had so many different notebooks but a friend, with whom I share stationery videos, had once sent me a video about a girl who has eleven different journals. Many were different types of bullet journals or scrap books. 

 

Something about having these different books makes sense though I cannot explain why, not really. Maybe they are like subject notebooks at school and one cannot write history notes in a geography or math book. Or maybe it is easier to find something I want when I have to look only in the relevant notebook. But they all contain knowledge and musings and the thought that I shouldn’t compartmentalize or fragment myself in so many journals also vexes me. Already things in the journal one and two overlap.

 

Like today I wrote in my personal journal (because it lies on my bedside table and I was too lazy to get to journal #2) about some socio-political stuff that arose from watching the coverage of a supreme court case against Sudarshan TV’s ‘hate’ programs and the larger questions around free press and government that rose from this – particularly how media regulation might work or not, and about having transparency of stakeholders and advertisers in media houses, as well as about where government spends tax payers money on advertisement. What further tickled my thoughts while watching another program on the same issue was how the head of one media house who would be labelled (pseudo)liberal talked about which news channels he watches and an article a friend had sent me about the gap between liberal values, which often are equated as elite values, and populism. I also wrote about an interaction with my sister around her interaction with the secretary of their landlord. How he huffed and puffed and evaded her calls and wouldn’t give her answers—basically how people connected to powerful people use that connection to bully others. This led to some memories from childhood of being a tomboy and why, and remembering others who were tomboys and wondering what their motivations were, and wondering where on the gender spectrum we feel ourselves to be now. 

 

I found a novel on my bookshelves that I need to read next—The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing. It is about a woman writer who keeps four different coloured notebooks, holding different aspects of her thought, and at a moment of crisis attempts to bring them together into one golden notebook. 

 

Hoping it will illuminate why I keep so many too. This rambling post about nothing meaningful has been very useful in a way I don’t yet know. I have been resisting the commitment to write a daily blog and perhaps I will commit or perhaps I won’t.