litter my world. I have written thoughts on scraps since my first year of college. I write ideas in the margins. I copy funny quotes, read and heard, at odd angles, on post-its and scratch pads. I have piles of notebooks dedicated exclusively to such nonsense. Some of my notebooks are over thirty years old. (Those who know me also know that I would never discard, well, almost anything.) [Ed. note: The oldest notebook I have is probably really only 27 years old.]
I found a small cache of scraps from my desk a few weeks ago. They were apparently transferred from my desk into a file folder for the move to California this past summer. They turned up during a frantic search for our ATV titles. (That is a whole other story.)
Most are not dated. Here they are -- exactly as they appear on the scraps.
"Applying an adjective to the word 'flexible' is another way to make apologies for any lapses in flexibility that exist." 18 April 1997
[Ed: I am sure I wrote this during a meeting or conference call.]
"Why do I care if anybody has sent me an email? Why do I care?"
[Ed: I sometimes tire of the expectations associated with email.]
"Most people confuse silence with agreement."
[Ed: Probably also a conference call note to self, though it is written in the margin of some Delphi code, my extension of the TStringList class.]
"(If) you say I've changed, I say how much the worse that I should stay the same."
[Ed: Written on the same scrap of Delphi code.]
Business card from my position as Director of Application Development at the Georgia Technology Authority.
[Ed: I left that position in 2003. My extension was 5282 - Java.]
Business card from a business I never really started: Data Analysis and Management. Circa 1995.
Conversation between two old men:
"Well, I ain't dumb. Hee-ow."
"Hell you ain't! You dummern hell."
"I'm dumb?"
"You're dummern hell."
"Damn. I'm hungry. Hee-ow."
[Ed: There's a kooky smiley face on the back of this one.]
"I'm sorry that my growing pains were so painful to others."
"By putting self as an object, I've created an infinite loop in any save routine."
[Ed: I'm not certain whether this referred to Delphi code or self actualization. Probably both.]
"We're such Gramma and Grampa types - we decided to skip parenthood and give birth to grandchildren instead."
"What would we talk about if other people didn't have any secrets?"
"Having control of your anger does not mean that one does not display it by shouting or even quietly slicing. Having control of your anger means that you understand its distant causes, its immediate causes, and the potential outcomes of those factors. We are just cogs in the great wheels of our anger. We should 'avail' ourselves to the solutions available to us."
[Ed: I might have read this somewhere. Or not.]
"A betrayal doesn't require an accomplice."
"Stupid people often ask other stupid people for advice. The unintelligent are pack animals, although this in no way impugns pack animals."
[Ed: That just feels like a conference call note.]
This one is my favorite. I don't remember writing it down, but I remember the event very clearly. My son was three or four years old when it happened.
"Michael sitting inside the shopping cart gets handed two cloves of garlic [and says]
'Now I can keep vampires away, two vampires at a time!'"
These
tiny bits
of paper
are also
the bits
that have made up
my life.
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1 comment:
Ahhh, superb find. Very Bukowski like.
I've done the same thing. Most of my notes and thoughts are scrawled throughout books that I read. Also in little pocket notebooks, which sometimes go through the wash . . . then I have to go into salvage mode and recopy into another pocket notebook.
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