On Keeping a Notebook
I’m currently reading Roland Allen’s The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper. I’ll have more to say about the book in my what I’m reading section after I finish reading it, but he has me thinking about how and why I take notes on my reading and also – in my journal – on my life. This is especially on my mind these days because the move to denote as my note-taking and journaling environment has me re-reading many notes I’ve made over the past several years. One thing that really fascinates me is how I’m reminded of events and readings that I’d completely forgotten – but, once reminded, I find that these things are once again in my mind. Perhaps I can say what I’m thinking more clearly — though I’m more than a little frustrated by having absolutely no memory of experiencing or reading something I describe in an entry written only a few years ago, I’m fascinated by how reading what I wrote has brought that experience back to mind rather vividly. Of course I’m reminded of what I described in the text that I’m now re-reading, but I can also remember other things associated with whatever it is that is described there. It’s as though the small bit that I wrote and can now read is the key that unlocks a much larger trove of memory. Funny how the mind works.
But it also opens up yet again the question why I write all of these notes. Joan Dideon records some thoughts about the likes of me, thoughts that are not altogether reassuring:
The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle. Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt that my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted to go to sleep and unafraid to wake up. Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss (“On Keeping a Notebook,” in Slouching Towards Bethlehem, p. 118).
In The Notebook, Allen describes another example of note-taking being called compulsive. Bob Graham was Democratic governor of Florida from 1978 to 1986, when he was elected to the United States Senate. Throughout his political career – while campaigning and while serving – he took extensive notes. His use of these notes served him very well as both a candidate and a government official. However, when he decided to run for president in 2004, his note-taking practice was ridiculed and parodied: “Ascend stage, stumble, regain balance.” Katie Couric, host of “The Today Show,” apparently missed the spoof and asked him about that particular entry. Then psychologist Aubrey Immelman weighed in: “I think it is a bit compulsive. It almost has a pacifier element to it, a security blanket. It suggests to me someone who has a lot of uncertainty and needs to create a structure.” Criticism followed. Graham withdrew from the campaign and decided not to run for re-election to the senate.
Compulsive, perhaps. But the notebooks themselves provided crucial evidence five years later when the CIA practice of waterboarding came to light. Democratic officials were severely critical of the practice; government officials responded by providing records of earlier meetings when Democrats had been informed. Graham didn’t remember those meetings, and he had his notebooks. So aides read through them and found that three of the meetings didn’t happen; at the fourth meeting the group discussed “interrogation” but no one mentioned waterboarding. The CIA looked through its records again and acknowledged that there was no discussion of waterboarding at any of the meetings with Democratic officials. As Rachel Madow put it, “Nerds one, spies zero.”
But back to Dideon’s suggestion that a “presentiment of loss” moves one to record one’s experience. Perhaps. In fact, I’m convinced that if I didn’t have these old notes, many of the events described there would have been forever lost to me. Moreover, I should now acknowledge that I’ll surely forget them again.
But what I like best about reading these old notes – and one reason that I’ll continue to write them — is that I appreciate the reminder of the sorts of things that I thought about, the recovery of who I was then. In some cases, I can be relieved that I’m no longer the person I was then. Dideon again:
Perhaps it is difficult to see the value in having one’s self back in that kind of mood, but I do see it; I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 ᴀ.ᴍ. of a bad night … (p. 124).
In other cases, I can relive my relationship with a dear friend who has died, remembering the subtle smile on his face as he wondered whether I would get the joke. The notes can bring all of it back. I think it’s all worth remembering.
Yes, there are those, like Dideon’s daughter, who feel no need to write in a notebook. But I’m glad for the writing, and also for the reading.