details of a sunset

[theladyrose]

I used to write my life out in post-it notes. Nothing was too trivial to document: snippets of conversations, phrases that sounded good in my head, song parodies, extensive film score reviewing notes, silly messages to friends, even the occasional cartoon. I used up nearly an entire pad in recording the dreams of a talking sonnambulist. (Sadly, those records of Cathy have mysteriously disappeared.) I've gone through at least ten pads covering friends' lockers entirely in post-it notes partly as an artistic statement, as a challenge to authority (will the maintenance crew take it down?) and as a way of cheering someone up or at least amusing them and myself. I've discovered too many too count in the top of my desk; as of a few days ago I couldn't open up that desk drawer without five things falling out because there were so many pieces of paper stuffed in there.

It's just like me to measure things out in minute quantities. Perhaps it's my innate emotional parsimony; perhaps it's my unreliable memory; perhaps it's sheer apathy. It's funny-I never really pay too much attention to all of the typical milestones like the start of a new year, getting my driver's licence, graduation, those sorts of things (I didn't even try for parallel structure; deal with it). I guess I just don't find those personal enough. These little scraps, like the proverbial message in a bottle, trap emotion as we'd like to remember them. It's savoring every moment to the point where they almost lose significance because there are so many of them. They offer a false sense of permanence in the past; I cling to them because they allow me to slip back for a moment to revisit my old life. And only now have I begun to realize that my attachment to these little slips of paper, often crumpled and unreadably scrawled, borders on the pathological. I have sometimes suspected that my passion for history stems from this deep-seated need to freeze frame and capture all of the moments I'm so afraid of losing, to have something of worth for which to account my life.

As you can guess, I can't bring myself to take them to the rubbish bin yet.

Comments

[dancing-avenger.livejournal.com]

this is kinda random but you write REALLY nicely. you make the simplest things sound very extravagant :)

i used to write everything down too.. but in notebooks and calendars. i realized that it was a terribly obsessive habit and somehow stopped. i can't say i've thrown them out, though.

[theladyrose.livejournal.com]

Thank you :) I think I have an unfortunate tendency to make things overly dramatic almost to a farcical scale.

I don't really remember when I stopped scribbling away my life, either. But it's hard to get rid of what you've already written down.

[one-blankpage.livejournal.com]

o my gosh. no, your writing IS nice. mine isn't AND i make things overdramatic.

and i, too, am a post-it-er. i don't throw them away. just like i can't throw away my planner.

we are a strange species, us (we?) humans.

[eyepiece-simile.livejournal.com]

You can't throw away those post-its!! If you must dispose of them, we should do it properly, like leaving them inside of random library books or something.

[leonhart5.livejournal.com]

I've always had this strange mental barrier to doing stuff that's useful but resource disposing. For example, I am very prolific and forever thinking of things I wanna write down yet if I have a notebook I can guarantee you I'll never fill it (probably never get past ten pages). I keep too much of it in my head because of this absurd yet subconscious perogative to conserve paper. I also seem to have a probelm putting things to the page that I've not already refined in my mind.

I never took to Post-Its for the same reason, and instead simply forgot every other thing I had to do...