Dear Diary

I once had this little notebook. It was flawlessly bound, its color inviting, and the leather cover was just barely wrinkled, as if it had already seen its share of words. Its pages were pristine; once I picked it up I could not help but run my fingers and eyes along its delicate lines that called out for words—-my words. And so I would sit at the edge of my chair and hold this lovely, empty book in my hands, hour after hour. Each day the ritual clawed at the edges of my mind until I sat at my desk, poised, pen in hand and notebook squarely in front of me, open to the first page. It was always the first page, always. It was always open, taunting me. Its blue lines, devoid of meaning but saturated with potential, shifted and blurred as my palms gathered damp, expectant sweat. And still, nothing happened.

I even tried to rid myself of this pretty notebook by burying it under layers and layers of mundane assignments, hoping to ebb its spell. But to no avail -- every night before surrendering to sleep I would dig it out again, pen in hand, determined to spill strings of eloquent phrases onto its perfect pages, as intricately woven as the bindings themselves. The notebook waited.

On lazy days when the sun was perpetually low in the sky and the neighborhood children came outside to play, I would lie on my back, examining the cracks in the ceiling for that idyllic concoction of words I’d been scavenging my brains for. This special little notebook didn’t deserve just any regular teenage journal entries; its faultless, unmarred sterility warranted more than adolescent love affairs and trivial dramas. How I yearned to swirl and drag and whip my pen across those pages with linguistic grace, philosophical paradigm. And no matter how still, how tantalizingly stagnant I lay on my back all those lazy days, the words just wouldn’t come.

To write is to be passionate, and to be passionate is to feel. Surely I felt the tangibility of cracked leather, of the deceptively smooth paper and its angry white hue. I could even smell the raw, factory-borne essence of consumerism. In my head I knew the masked seductive appeal could be attributed to clever manufacturing—a ploy for selling a mixed blessing. And that’s all it is, was what I said to myself. But I couldn’t find the logic to disguise that I felt inferior to a damn notebook.

The act of writing itself is haunting. Words become intermingled with words, and thoughts glide over one another until everything becomes a glorious hum without context or meaning. As if every idea passes through at the exact moment and I am overcome with the wonderful sense of understanding without ever comprehending a single thing.

Months trailed after weeks of this stalemated creativity match until the irony of the entire situation tickled me cruelly. It was my 10th grade English teacher who first picked up my old, battered spiral journal with distaste and said, “You should use a pretty, bound diary instead of this old thing; it’ll help your writing.” Her manicured nails a stark contrast to the torn cardboard cover of my nearly-filled spiral, she set it aside, shaking her head as if unable to grasp the notion of anyone using such a dull journal.

I still had my old friend somewhere, abandoned for its plainness. Its warm comfort and lenient expectations dispersed to give way for the immaculate prestige of my new leather notebook, forgotten. It was then that I brought it out again, apologetic tension coupled with guilt still fresh. The red cover may have been adorned with stray pen marks, the corners may have been curling inward, but inside were the thoughts I sought after all this time. The trivial dramas were there in their entirety, interlaced seamlessly like silk with the keenest observations of the world around me. The disjointed notes and rhythms of the neighborhood children’s voices, the elegance of the rose growing outside my window, the summer breeze that stirred my perceptions into one vast realization: it was all here. Beneath this worn cover of not cardboard but love, were the ideas I lived by.

I once had a little notebook. It was bound with words.