The thing’s become ridiculous!/Why am I so? Why am I thus? Concluding couplet of Dorothy Parker’s “A Fairly Sad Tale”
I’m thinking about starting a commonplace book. They’re quite popular these days, if by “these days” you mean from Greco-Roman times through the present. The name commonplace harks back to “loci communes,” which is evidently Latin for a place to collect one’s thoughts. A commonplace book is made by 1) gathering facts, quotations, anecdotes, observations, drawings, discoveries, etc., 2) classifying this information into various categories; and 3) using the collection to generate ideas and connections. I’m working on a complicated writing project this fall and feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the material and ideas I need to get into place. I keep turning my desktop and books into porcupines bristling with Post-It notes (some of them marking the quotes in this essay). It’s driving me nuts! I need a different method of data-wrangling.
And he strutted for money now, in schoolrooms built/On Ohio’s plains, surrounded by the graves/Of all of our fathers, but more of his than ours. Mary Oliver, “Learning About the Indians”
One of the Post-Its marks Oliver’s poor Mr. White, aka White Eagle when he is in full costume, doing his demeaning, mildly profitable, Indian dances in front of the class. I sat through similar stuff as a high school student. I’m a bit fearful that starting a commonplace book will provide me with about as much joy as writing a high school term paper. As taught by my sophomore English teacher, Mrs. White (no relation to Mr. White of the poem), data collection was a rigid, joyless process. Buy a package of index cards, research at the library, and write one fact or quote per card. Put a topic slug at the top of the card and the citation at the bottom. Dull, and something to abandon once there’s no grade at stake.
In my mid-eighties, I feel more strongly than ever that I have an endless amount of studying and thinking to do in order to become the musician I would like to be. Georg Solti, Memoirs.
Solti wrote those words when was 84. Learning is a lifelong process. It’s not just for scholars, monks and philosophers, the great minds of the world. It’s not just for Victorian girls in high-necked dresses. It’s for everyone. Look at all those ideas that still need to be sorted! The good ones, the bad ones, and the puffy little thoughts scudding along!
Show your quick, alarming skill in/Tidy mockeries of art;/Never, never dip your quill in/Ink that rushes from your heart. Dorothy Parker, “For a Lady Who Must Write Verse.”
Not all of the quotes have to promote admirable traits. I’d love it if I could absorb enough elegant phrases to drop a few snarky Parkerisms into my conversations. She would have known how to reply to the shelf-stocker slinging (literal) baloney at Walmart last Monday. He wanted to talk to me about the violence in Israel and Palestine this week and whether we’re about to launch into World War III. I grabbed a package of brats and chirped “I sure hope not” while making a swift retreat toward the breakfast aisle. He kept slinging and talking, louder and louder.
Or the man on the street this morning who told me, excitedly, that today is Marie Arthur’s birthday. She’s 64. I know neither of these people. “Well, a very happy birthday to her,” is what I said.
That’s not really what I want out of a commonplace book. Just a distraction as I look at intimidating tutorials that showcase the aesthetics of decorating one’s (beautifully handwritten) quotes. I do like blogger Ashley Holstrom’s take on this method as making “a journal of what was meaningful to you at a certain point in time, but it’s not in your own words.” I just want to organize and sharpen my thoughts. Even when, as is the case right now, my eyelash keeps getting stuck in my eye.
Your goodness must have some edge to it,—else it is none. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance.”
the jeanSpace 