The writer gripping Notebook Number 1 (March 14, 2008)
1. The Moleskin Notebooks: blank, fresh, terse.
Record of unremarkable thoughts, thoughts thought with thinning passion. Impressionistic paragraphs, perhaps pointillistic in style. Eyes tire in this dimly lit room. I express the thinking of my thoughts on page one to the end of time then do it all over again. Sands of eternity cleanse my filthy fingers.
March of the great oxen on the Oregon Trail of dead. Swift deaths to the godheads. I carry a butcher’s bloody knife by my side for it’s the twilight of the idols and I’m taking out their legs. I’m fucking your girlfriend on gray matter. Don’t see Derek, he’s the Breakfast Club’s basket case – where can one’s mind go? Choreographed chaotics, rehearsed histrionics: what are these words I toss through the air?
2. In a vortex swirling with linguistic absurdities and philosophical inquiries, the snake devours its rattles and chokes on its venom.
I have my head on straight at this moment in my history that never ends. I go straight to the primary sources of thought and tire out along the way. Firing stray silver bullets into the sky, I can feel the synapses snapping.
She shouldn’t have learned that sound, the sound he heaved out of his heavy head. Now she’s tied to the stake, stark naked and shaking while I write this imaginative filth. Understand that I’m fucking your girlfriend on the gray matter of Valentine’s day. Brand her bare ass as I explode into a million little pieces: notes for the right nose, you understand?
3. Steel thoughts from the sky.
What thoughts cross my mind? What can be said about them? Are they novel? or are they simply exercises in style? Notes? Remarks? On what? On the great void, the edge of absurdity, the spiral into the yawning abyss?
Strange nostalgias for my strangest solitudes.
The cores of communication, exchanges in the receding word economy – what are we capitalizing on?
4. Dim the music: time to write, think.
A plate of Wittgenstein’s words requires finesse to choreograph their proper digestion.
I sometimes wonder what drove me into philosophy.
We must have hit a rock, stubbed our toes, tripped over our feet because now we’re stuttering and chewing off our tongues trying to express our pains.
5. Can I sum it all up in one sentence?
Pocket-sized notebooks compel me to write tightly and concisely. The sharpness of these notebooks can finely trim the hedges of your lawn.
Before obsession ensues, let’s change the tempo tapping on our ears.
Does my pondering really lead me to floundering?
Fanciful flights of mind, though flights at lower altitudes with the terrible turbulence coming to a calm.
6. A sharpening of the senses, sensibility; clarity of vision, thought: what do these words reveal about me?
Overstuffed chair, overstuffed mind.
Incessant babble in the brain.
So much writing to be done, writing, writing, writing: love it or leave it.
Buffoons choose baboons for house pets.
Skin-tight denim jacket: you look overheated.
7. I remember the best of the times, the worst of times, and times forgotten by those around me. I’m yearning for a strange, but lofty, solitude. Loneliness and grace for me. My brain’s been wrecked and wracked, and hinged together by a few pills. Madness seems to be lurking over the great wall. Can one get a sense for an impending break? snap? Yesterday was clear; today became a shotgun day. I sit outside, tarring up my lungs, and the incessant babble whirs. I listen, I sit and listen to my broken thoughts. The bitter-sweet smell of psychosis.
8. I never fail finding something to do, like gripping this pen as tightly as possible because that’s all there is to hang on to.
Fuck (with) my writing.
Philosophy of diseased mind.
Travels of thought interrupted by bitchings for beer.
Hanging onto the hands of one’s own mind. Attempt at a getting-going.
Blurbs for nothing. Texts for everything. This page contains nonsense and some sense.
The Tripper’s dilemma: LSD is a flawed language-game.
9. How do we write about mind? What thoughts cross our mind while writing about it? Bear in mind that writing is thinking, thinking is hard, and that we are wondering why thought feels situated in a medium called “mind”.
Though we often think of thought situated somewhere in the head, we also think of writing and speaking as thought.
“I can’t hear myself think!”
10. Some days thoughts “come on doves’ wings.” Some days they hit you like a brick. Other days there isn’t a catch, nothing to reel in: I guess we’re not eating dinner tonight.
I write a single paragraph, cap my pen, and call that “thinking,” a thought. I don’t follow up, I let it stand stark naked in the frigid winter air. Then I wonder what I was thinking about and nothing comes to mind. Was the paragraph an explosive expression of thought, an agitation in the mind? or was it something I did to pass the time?
11. Writing, thinking.
All of my thinking efforts went into emails. So now what do I write about, think about?
Thoughts are often difficult to bring to the foreground of the picture plane. Do I really know what I’m writing about in these notebooks, these “bullshit journals”? Do I know what I mean? Do I ramble? Or am I writing what I really know? grazing the limits of language? Or am I at the foundations of language? Is there much difference?
12. My glasses slip to the tip of my nose and I don’t know where I am in this writing.
I couldn’t get you on the phone, nor by email. The string bean state I am in doesn’t have me strung out. You were a passion, fueled by foul language and crimes against humanity. We went our ways: I wailed, you’re now withering, and my head is white. I jangle the few cents in my pockets, but the sounds don’t get far. The register is closed, the drawer empty, so what do you want from me: a diary of my inner longings?Think quick, witty one, for time’s not holding your hand anymore.
13. I’ll spot you a kiss goodnight for a couple tranquilizers. I need them to sleep by you.
How many songs have I listened to? How many words have I heard? How many meanings have been thrown in my way?
A mind to trickle fingers down the notches of your spine. Let’s get to the bottom and press hard. Let’s slip a disc, break a bone.
Feels so good to motor-mouth away.
Small notebooks for small thoughts?
Posted by derekscantrell 
