You Say ‘Moleskin’, I Say ‘Moleskeen’

I, like many people who write, carry a small notebook to jot down ideas when they come to me. Two reasons, really: (1) An idea for a post will not stay with me for more than 30 seconds, even if it’s the most exciting thought I ever thunk, and (2) during Those Dry Times, I can sometimes flip through the pages and find something to blather on about.

If I don’t have my Moleskine® with me, I just scribble on a sticky note, a receipt, a gum wrapper… and my desk is littered with these little pieces of paper all the time. Here are some in front of me right now:

• hands smelling like lavender after washing Baby E’s head
• past tense of breathe should be broathe
• Things I Don’t Like: (1) when people pronounce amphitheatre as if it has no h after the p
• I worry that Boonie didn’t know how much I loved him.
• “I don’t eat when I’m not hungry.” –Kate K. Jealous.
• Horrifying thought of the day: A hundred years ago, I would’ve been considered a spinster. A SPINSTER. People get into relationships ALL THE TIME. What the hell is wrong with me?
• Liane Hansen pronouncing “Ghostface Killah” in Mark Ronson interview—hahahaha

Most of these scribbles will never get written about. There’s just not enough there. But I really want there to be. I practically sprain my brain trying to weave these threads into something meaningful. One I keep looking longingly at is:

• B: “Fly, you fools” (LOTR)

This is a reference to Christmas 2001 when my family saw The Lord of the Rings in a tiny theatre in Stowe, Vermont. At the moment when Gandalf was hanging from the precipice—the hobbits staring, petrified, powerless to stop his fall—my brother leaned over to my ear and said, “Fly, you fools!” one second before those words came out of the Grey Wizard’s mouth. And it was one of the most thrilling moments I’ve ever experienced. The combination of the emotional intensity of the scene and my brother’s precognition was too much.

I shouldn’t have been surprised, of course. My brother had read all the books a brazilian times; he knew every slash of a sword and every breath of a Ringwraith. (Now Dan Miller or somebody’s going to comment that Ringwraiths don’t breathe or something. Shut it, I don’t know anything about them because I didn’t read anything but Nancy Drew when I was little.) But it was so awesome. Just an awesome moment in my life.

So I’ve wanted to write about that moment for a long time; I just didn’t know what else to say about it.

And I still don’t, but there it is.

On the internet.

So. Yeah.

This is one of Those Dry Times.