pigeon

Notes to Myself

NOTE TO SELF: figure out what I could possibly have to say about Notes to Myself

I’m not even sure this is really a pigeon. More of a ... duck?

I forgot to meditate yesterday. I sat down to read a book but kept getting interrupted by stuff I left upstairs, the idea of the phone, kids needing rides back and forth across Milwaukee, my eyes’ tendency to dart away from whatever they’re asked to focus on for a prolonged time.

Cats.

Things I forgot to do.

Textual fragments in my mind, each about the length of the textual fragments comprising Hugh Prather’s struggle to become a person.

I’m struggling to become a person right now — an awake one, anyway.

It seems impossible that Deep Thoughts wasn’t at least in part inspired by Notes to Myself.

If it was “these days,” I bet Notes to Myself woulda been a series of tweets. Or a blog (lol).

But it isn’t “these days,” it’s the 80s once again, and me and Elzo and Serei, in our like triangle (not really a love triangle, but passionate in its own way) have been passing this book around among us and a few others.

Midway between meditation and shlock, between poetry and self-help, profound and obvious, sensitive and cringe. NOTE TO SELF: don’t try to describe the book, it doesn’t matter.

What does matter?

I don’t know. None of this, clearly. I’ve been caring too much lately.

Haha, this pigeon’s random-noun name is “ashtray.” I saw an ashtray at an antique store yesterday and it reminded me that those were things we used to use. Normal homes had ashtrays in them. That’s a thing me and Elzo used to do, too — smoke. Not Serei, of course. She was smarter than we were, and probably still is. I think Elzo still smokes, amazingly. Not sure, because we’ve fallen out of touch the last year or so. The one friend I have left from back there back then, the one person I’ve known since grade school, and I keep thinking NOTE TO SELF: Call Elzo. But then I don’t.

But when we talk on the phone, we’re always drinking and getting high, and I don’t do those things anymore so I don’t know what I would have to say or how it would go, and it seems kind of pointless. Is that really it?

The cover of the paperback edition we had features two leaves, looking kind of pressed. They’re not quite ginkgo leaves, but that’s what they remind me of, because ginkgo leaves always remind me of Serei — playful, compact, brilliant, capricious. The ginkgos down the block from my dad’s house were in full gold when she came over for dinner. She laughed, on the phone, when I told her what I was preparing for her. “You and your Cornish game hens just made my day,” she said, and of course that made my day, though it also upped the expectations a bit beyond the comfort zone. Serei was Elzo’s “girlfriend” for a while (he was in love with her), she was my “girlfriend” for a while (I was enchanted by her), she was temporarily “girlfriend” to a few other boys, some in love, all fascinated by the first-magnitude karst spring of her neverending energy; we were probably somewhat entertaining to her but ultimately a distraction, a holding pattern. Last I heard, she was married to a woman in Boston, doing quite well.

I guess we passed that book around because it hinted, magnetically, at something we were trying to become as well, something we didn’t, in the barbarian 80s, have sufficient vocabulary for. Now we have almost too much vocabulary, and —

So I just “searched inside” courtesy of Google Books. You know, I don’t think it’s actually shlock at all! It is kind of like a long-ass blog post. It asks a lot of good questions that I’m glad we were asking each other, back in the throes of high school. I wonder how we got introduced to it in the first place. Maybe numero uno English teacher Mrs. S gave it to us? Possibly one of our parents?

Ha! I was all prepared to be cynical, like, oohhhh, look at us pretentious kids, walking around thinking all these clichés are so profound! But — they are. NOTE TO SELF: Pick up a copy of Notes to Myself and get over your damn self. And quit isolating yourself from your friends while you’re at it.

I’ve been thinking too much, ruminating, caring too much, dreading the smallest things, waking up tired, spending too much energy avoiding certain feelings, staying resentful too long. Even the pigeons have started feeling like a burden, and that’s crazy, man, how can a thing with wings that barely weighs anything at all be a burden, be anything other than uplifting? Times are weird. The weight of the world. I have a lot of work to do. Not as much as some, perhaps, or perhaps the comparison is meaningless.

But it's morning. Within my hands is another day. Another day to listen and love and walk and glory. I am here for another day.

I think of those who aren't.