Tossing Notebooks

So already, so many notebooks, so little time--and space. The permission, combined with the encouragement, to dispose of filled, long-stored notebooks was granted to me in early January--and in the nick of time. 

 

I had just decided that the upcoming spring would be the perfect time to renovate my kitchen. But as I drove* toward my mother's senior care community on that rainy Monday morning, I wondered how I would manage to store my kitchen stuff while my kitchen was being gutted and rebuilt. In my small condominium, almost all of the storage space is already claimed.

 

On that gray, wet morning, an author whose name I can't recall was being interviewed on one of Boston's public radio stations. Discussing strategies for overcoming "stuckness" and depression in the contexts of both writing and life, she advocated throwing out old journals and diaries, unless one really had a clear plan and reason to reread them.

 

And oh, did I have old journals and diaries that I already knew I had no desire to read again! Somehow, though, years ago, I'd gotten it into my head that to dispose of one's diaries and journals was to devalue oneself and one's "journey" as a person. So I'd kept them, and planned to throw them out just before I died. 

 

Because I was already dedicated to no one else's reading them, I had carefully planned for their destruction should death claim me before I could make that final dumpster run. As the adjacent photo shows, I had precisely labeled the box in which they were stored, entrusting my husband to toss them without reading them. 

Three days after listening to that public radio interview, I pulled that carton off my closet shelf and emptied it. I flipped through a few of the notebooks just in case something gave me a good reason to reconsider my plan. Nothing did. I felt like the speaker in Mary Oliver's poem "Storage" who feels similarly disconnected from the contents of the storage unit that she eventually empties: "Occasionally I went there and looked in,/ but nothing happened, not a single/ twinge of the heart."**

 

So out those diaries and journals went. Like Oliver, I felt that discarding those notebooks represented more gain than loss, but my experience of parting with them was less spiritual than hers. She--I do think she is the speaker in her poem--equated unburdening herself of "Things!" with creating "More room in your heart for love, . . .." My response was far more practical and self-centered: not only did I now have an additional empty carton and spot to put it in once I filled it with kitchen paraphernalia, but I also felt emotionally freer and lighter, having destroyed the evidence of my bad taste in men during my twenties and thirties.

But, in fact, I had many more filled notebooks***--notebooks connected to my writing aspirations, notebooks connected to my exploration of Judaism, notebooks reflecting my many years of coaching and mentoring other teachers, and notebooks filled with lecture and seminar notes from my college and graduate school days.

 

It's been far harder to decide which of these to toss.

 

As for the notebooks connected to my writing aspirations, I've now tossed out whole swaths of morning pages**** that I wrote in conjunction with Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way. Those pages fulfilled their purpose when I wrote them. The other notebooks I'd filled with process writing to help me generate or recognize writing ideas seemed to me to have less shelf-life than tax returns: anything written too long ago seemed to have been written by another me. So I've thrown out the notebooks that were more than four years old.

I am holding on to the notebooks related to my exploration of Judaism and its place in my life, primarily because their contents tend to reflect whatever reading I was doing or courses I was taking while I was in the midst of a particular part of the liturgical year.***** I do look back at these notebooks to understand how different aspects of Jewish wisdom and practice have resonated with me in different years. I don't want to forget what is still new and often fragile learning for me.

The notebooks from my years of coaching and mentoring other teachers I've relegated to the trash, though I really enjoyed looking through them a final time before I did: so many notes I'd taken during and after meetings with my colleagues who were always striving to do right by their students and colleagues; so many memories of shared commitment, dedication, and time spent. Fortunately I have books, articles, and artifacts by which to remember the spirit and work of my fellow educators.

To my surprise, I've been finding it hardest to part with my notebooks from college and graduate school. It's hard to let go of the wisdom of my teachers that those notebooks contain. So much of my understanding of literary history and history more generally, and the relationship between these, derives from the coursework captured in these notebooks. So many of my sensibilities as an appreciator and explorer of literature, art, and music were shaped by how, when, and where my professors taught me to look, question, synthesize and imagine.

 

Still, I can't imagine rereading those notebooks. So now that I've recognized that their current importance is primarily symbolic, I will be able to throw them out and to remember them by the adjacent photo.

 

When I first started writing this post, I wasn't sure why I wanted to write about tossing notebooks--but I was sure that I did. My husband Scott suggested I was motivated by a desire to divest myself of some aspects of my past in order to move more freely toward the future and new. But I'm not sure.

I have to admit, the prospect of a new kitchen makes me feel like I'm moving toward the new. But a new kitchen is hardly a perspective-altering voyage around the world. If anything, it's an investment in domesticity and trusted habit, especially because I like to cook, and even need to cook in order to feel that home is being home.

The full ending of Mary Oliver's poem is as follows:

I felt like the little donkey when

his burden if finally lifted. Things!

Burn them, burn them! Make a beautiful

fire! More room in your heart for love,

for the trees! For the birds who own

nothing--the reason they can fly!

In the last weeks, I've felt more lightened than enlightened by heaving some of my old stuff. A kitchen is not a storage space; it can't do its job if it holds "nothing." I look forward to the task I'll have later this year of figuring out what to put where in my new cabinets. Cooking requires "Things," and the birds I'm most likely to see in my kitchen are chickens.  

 

* Screenshot section of a photo embedded in the following blog post: Popa, B. (2012, March 11). How Windshield Water Repellent Products Work. Autoevolution. https://www.autoevolution.com/news/how-windshield-water-repellent-products-work-43296.html.

** Oliver, M. (2020). Storage. Devotions: The selected poems of Mary Oliver. (2nd ed., p. 7). Penguin Books. (Original work published 2017).

*** Screenshot section of a photo embedded in the following website: Saint Augustine Catholic school. (n.d.).  Saint Augustine parish. Retrieved on March 23, 2024, from https://www.staugustines.net/fullscreen-page/comp-j8ye2ao1/7b5906bf-7052-4517-8b21-07adaccd182b/3/%3Fi%3D3%26p%3Dq8zel%26s%3Dstyle-j92fd4ds9.

**** I have blogged about writing morning pages; here is the link to one such blog: https://soalready.blogspot.com/2016/08/experiments-and-experiences-in-writing.html

***** I have blogged often about my experiences of preparing for the Jewish High Holy days during the month of Elul; here is a link to one such blog: https://soalready.blogspot.com/2020/09/from-field-when-toe-in-is-all-in.html.