The Notebooks

I went out and bought two or three of these notebooks - probably just before my 59th birthday.

I used to write in “journals” off and on for years - somewhere out there in the barn/workshop there’s a box full of those hard-bound-book type things. Some fancy, some plain. I guess they appealed to a part of me that thought writing stuff down needed to look serious. Most of them aren’t even 1/4 full.

Around eight years ago I fell in with a group of local musicians - some were songwriters, some singers and players. I have always loved music - there was a grand piano in our living room when I was a kid. My two older sisters got piano lessons that they did not like - I did not get the lessons but my mother used to say that I made musical-sounding things on that piano.

I bought my first guitar at 13 - I was enthralled with the 60’s Folk scene.

Anyway - the notebooks. I have been earning a living doing carpentry for about forty years now. At this point I don’t have to think real hard to get the work done. I also work alone often and the internal dialogue just runs on and on. When I got a computer I naturally started keeping little online notebooks. Falling back into music via the friends that I had found, I began to channel my internal dialogues into paper notes during the day. Scribblings that I was hoping were song-like ideas. I began to amass pockets full of scrap paper. I wrote on the backs of receipts, my appointment books - that kind of thing. So that day came when I went to Office Depot in Rio Grande and bought a couple of black & white composition books - and one orange one on a whim. I intended to proceed in an orderly fashion and work in one until it was filled up before starting in the next one. That probably didn’t last very long. Being lazy by nature I would eventually just grab whichever one was nearby and so at this point the chronology of the scribblings is totally out of whack. 

I think I also liked the idea that buying those notebooks seemed to indicate the serious intent that I had bent myself to. So I bought more before any were filled up. 

I page back through them from time to time - I see the same ideas presented and re-presented. It has led me to think that there are a half-dozen or so issues that concern most of us. I’m often surprised to see how long ago an idea that I think of as recent was initially written down.

There might be five or six currently working - I think there are two that are filled. The orange one is faded to a pale ochre.

I managed to lose track of one a couple of years ago. Actually, I didn’t lose track of it - I lost it.

I dropped it in the driveway of The Mad Batter Bar & Restaurant during one of the SS Cape May conferences. I didn’t even miss it. One night last year I was at The Batter to hear Dan Barry play. His bass player Dominic Mancini came up to me and handed me the notebook that he’d found back then. I didn’t recognize it at first when he handed me that notebook - then I saw the black “3” on the cover. Apparently I had numbered them once before the scheme got out of whack. As I said, I see the same themes coming up over and over, but sometimes in between all the negligible scrawls there are a few keepers.

Returning

(MQMurphy cameraphone image)

Today – this beautiful August the twenty-fourth – has the feeling of a tipping point. 

It’s almost as if there is a current, or a stream of biology deep inside of me that feels or knows this. 

As though the year is a ball tossed into the air and today is the day when the momentum slows, slows to a halt – there is a pause that is 

eternal and only a millisecond – and we fall

back towards the contracting and condensing of the year from which we’ll need to be hurled up again to air and warmth and light.

. . . and what do we make of this?

(Hmmm . . . could there be a dark side to MQMurphy? Another bit from the early 90's)

Presents

Thank you, my sweet family,
for this birthday present you've
given me. Fifty feet of crisp new
rope, and a big yard to play in - I'll
race you to the fence.
This coil of manilla; I'll show you a
turban - or a crown. Shake it loose, let it
settle down
on my shoulders - a yoke -
this reminds me of a joke
that I'm just making up
about the boy who hoisted
the family Toyota into a tree
by throwing a rope over a limb
and tying it to the bumper.
"Stand back! - and witness
the strongest man in ten counties!",
he cried.
The slipknot slipped, tightened, he died -
but not before the car was a
good ten feet off the ground.

Yet again, an old thing

Here’s something from an old notebook. Actually, something on a scrap of paper that was in a notebook – and the last dated entry in this notebook is from April of 1994. Also, I'm not saying that I won't take this and try to make it into something else. It sets up a theme - there's a punch to be delivered at the end, perhaps. I haven't got the punch yet.

If I were to title it today, maybe it would be “Not Being There” or maybe "Getting Nowhere" – but it doesn’t have a title.

I struggle to keep my
anonymity a secret.
I deposit checks
after crossing out my name.

I disguise my handwriting,
Or make it completely illegible,
If necessary.

I eat my words;
I eat yours too.

I’ve modified my calculator
To display only zeros.

I stand in a corner like God’s
Forgotten Hobby.

I’ve considered moving
To a town that’s gone under.
Much the less in those empty storefronts
To tempt my consumer’s soul.

Dog Hair

2/8/07 11:17:27 AM
Windy and cold today. Haven’t been out except to walk to the mailbox.
Been sitting here at the counter emailing back and forth with Ellen upstairs and Tim in Cherry Hill. Tim started this string of emails with a link to a NY Times article about earthen floors, and he suggested using dog hair instead of horse hair or straw as a filler/binder in the floors. One thing led to another and to a string of Haiku (as these things often do) –

Mine:
Fortune awaits us -
Our Stella alone will floor
McMansions galore

Ellen’s:
Enterprise anew
Shining fur gleaming and black
With thanks to our pack

Tim’s:
Mud-matted dog hair
Dirt to dirt and dusty feet
Fits. Starts. Full circle.

The 'fits-starts-full circle' reference was to Tim’s tongue-in-cheek name for the construction company he and friends made up while working on a camp cabin. He’d mentioned it in his first post about the earthen floors. All in all, a frigid morning well spent, I’d say.

Letting go

Another old journal entry -
November 24, 2004 6:14 PM
Interesting end to the day – a nice piece on All Things Considered by a guy who built a log cabin in Maine with two friends back in the late sixties. He told it well, about the work and the friendship, about getting the materials and tools to a site without a road. The friends grew up, changed jobs, moved apart. One friend, the owner of the cabin, sent the writer a letter about how he planned to burn the cabin down – no one used it anymore except vagrants and he was afraid of someone getting hurt. He took pictures of the fire. The other friend, on hearing of the event, sent a Japanese poem that I remember as:

I see the moon so clearly
Now that my storehouse has burned.

This brought tears to my eyes. The whole thing – hold on but don’t be attached. I love you all.