On Keeping a Notebook

I was going to make this post a couple weeks ago when I hit the mark of being here for a whole month but then that day came and went and know I’m at point where I’ve got a month left. So I better do it now before it’s June and I’m like “oh yeah… that post.”

Since I left, I’ve been keeping a notebook full of… well.. notes. Notes on conversation’s I've overhead, things I’ve noticed, blog drafts, etc. I like keeping notebooks when I travel because it allows me to remember the small, quirky things during the trip that I may have forgotten otherwise. During my last trip to Europe, I kept a notebook but it also played part sketchbook and part diary, I then continued to use it for random things after I returned. The book is now full directions to get around Paris, hostel addresses, photoshoot ideas and sketches, editing notes, random math, passwords to things I don’t remember, general thoughts, and quotes I overheard. I wasn’t too detailed with the note keeping in that one. I can tell when and where I wrote something based off context clues like the mention of a place and occasionally a date. I have a quote written down that is simply “Shoreditch hipsters suck dick.” I have no idea where I heard it or who may have said it. I know it was London based off the other notes around it and it may have been near the end of my stay in London based on the fact that the Paris notes start shortly after which means it was most likely at the last hostel I was staying in which was attached to a pub. So it’s very likely it was just something a drunk guy was shouting. Who knows.

This time around, I’m trying to be a little more detailed, I’ve also got a separate journal and sketchbook so it’s exclusively for this purpose. I’ve started writing down small details about wherever I'm at (or was at). I’ve got a page and a half that is nothing but like details about the bar in the JFK airport I was in. So now I remember that the tv in Uptown Brasserie was playing ESPN and the guy talking had vinyl copies of Radiohead, Pink Floyd, and Weezer’s Pinkerton on the wall behind him and an air of insufferable dude-bro-ness. Every five minutes or so the tv would flicker but nobody paid attention to it. A guy pulled up a chair next to me at the bar despite there being 10 empty seats. He ordered red wine and a cheese plate while he watched a survival show on his laptop. I sipped on an watered down whiskey smash and ordered an overpriced bacon and gouda burger which smelled weird. Had two whiskey smashes actually. The second one was stronger. A group of middle aged men behind me (golf shirts tucked into khakis or jeans, you know at least one has slapped a waitress on the ass) talked their friend into ordering a “rusty nail.” They were shocked when the server told them he didn’t know what that was, and even more shocked (and a little offended?) when the server told them the bar doesn’t have drambuie. They spent a good amount of time complaining about the lack of drambuie. “I would have thought that in all places, the New York airport would have drambuie.” I can’t tell if that was sarcasm or not.

As you can see, there’s a lot more than just “Shoreditch hipsters suck dick.” I was able to write out a whole paragraph about an hour spent in an airport bar, and I didn’t even include everything. I’ve been keeping note on everything from what’s on the tv to what people next to me are doing. There’s a note written down about the train ride up to Dublin that just says “it suddenly smells like bacon.” It’s not much but using that sense of smell helps put you in the moment. I take the notes as I can when I’m out but a lot of the time I wait until I’m back home. I take note of the time occasionally and I write down whatever I’m listening to, if anything. Most of my blog entries are drafted in the book that way it’s easier for me to find my tone and figure out what I want to touch on and how. Barely any of the final versions are similar to the drafts and ironically this particular one one is being written as I go.

The one thing I make sure I have with me when I travel is this book.

You could say that the only reason I’m keeping this notebook is for the purpose of this blog, which may be partly true. I kept a blog last time I was in Europe. But I think the bigger reason is simply for myself. That’s why I used that particular Joan Didion quote in the excerpt (“I imagine, in other words, that the notebook is about other people. But of course it is not… Remember what it was to be me: that is always the point.” In case you didn’t see it) and why I named this entry after her essay “On Keeping a Notebook” which that quote hails from. Didion’s essay is pretty much the reason why I started keeping these notebooks. I want to be able to look back one day and remember those moments and remember who I was at that time.

One of my favorite moments in my life was noted during my time in Brussels. I was at the start of a 6 week trek that would take me from Dusseldorf to Brussels, Bruges, London, and Paris. It was the end of June. That afternoon was very hot, and garbage day as I noticed while walking from the train station to my hostel. I walked for two hours in the sun with two large backpacks strapped to my body, convinced that I was lost. I had no data so I couldn’t use my phone to check the map. All I had were the directions I had written down in my notebook and the cliffnotes memory of those directions which was “hit the canal and turn right.” I got to the hostel drenched in sweat and the burgeoning promise of back problems later on. After a 30 minute shower and a change into dry clothes, I went to find dinner. I settled on a small pizza place across the canal from the hostel. It wasn’t so much that it looked good so much as it was that I was tired and too hungry to look further. It was your average hipster, brick oven pizza joint in a terrible neighborhood that puts the fear of gentrification into everyone. I settled at a table outside, happy to sit and relax for the first time in hours. It had cooled off considerably since the afternoon and a strong wind had picked up. The restaurant sat in the shade but down the street you could see the Golden Hour light skirting across buildings along the canal. But despite the struggles of that afternoon, as I sat there observing the city happening around me, I realized that I was unequivocally happy and peaceful. I know it was real because it was before the buffalo mozzarella margherita pizza showed up. I smile crossed my face and a warmth came over me despite the chill in the air. It was a sensation I don’t think I really, fully experienced before that moment. And over the years, I relive that moment.

All that? Written in small notes in my first Europe notebook. But I’ve read it enough times to be able to fully retell it. Had I not written that down later that night, it may have turned into a memory that occasionally sprang up when I had margherita pizza (which is almost never) or was outside at Golden Hour in June and a familiar smell wafted by. So while I’m happy to be able to use these notes to be able to write out over the last week and share it with all of you, I’m more happy that I’ll be able to step back and see where and who I was in that moment.