The Journal Abides

An old leather journal is standing proud on the podium, giving a commencement address to a fresh class of diverse journals all bound for different destinies.

"For now you are blank, clean slates composed purely of possibility. You've had the training, rigorous days and nights learning what it means to be the cornerstone of creation itself."

The sparkling eyes of our young journal float over a smile wider than any other book in the room. Standing eagerly listening to the legendary diary extending the rites of passage to these fellow beacons of tangible creativity.

"Hardcovers and softcovers of all sizes, ranging the entirety of the rainbow, we are proud of every one of you. Your rounded corners and elastic enclosures. Your revered acid-free paper...and now you are graduating with honorary bookmark ribbons." The Legend adjusts his mustache with a noble smirk. The crowd cheers in admiration of their ribbons.

"You are now made whole, ready to meet the hand who holds the pen!" The Journals call out in response: "The hand who holds the pen!" They raise their hands in unison to the sky in honor of their deity before returning to applause.

"Now, go forth and give your all to the name that will be etched upon your flyleaf. Never forget that you are an extension of them in a sacred bond."

The graduation hall fades into the harsh, cold reality of the Journal's current existence, living out the bond to the name, address-less on the incase of loss portion of the flyleaf.

"Write or Die" tattooed on the pointer finger of her writing hand trembling in the same wind causing the pages to rustle. The shivering is a distraction but one she can power through, using it to her benefit as the words drive on - pouring out of her into the frostbitten night.

There is simply no time to wrap the elastic band over the pages in order to keep them from flitting against her sleeve. She's never been able to write with a glove and the redness of early frostnip is beginning to set in, this journal entry is now a race against time. Once again, never stopping until the words dictate she is finished through rain, sleet, or snow.

Nearly a year and nearly full, It has been a very long life as a journal. Though notebooks don't have to worry about the cold, the wear and tear does add up. The graduation bookmark has been gone for months; duct tape holds the inner pocket together; and the leather has been worn by a myriad of uses: A fly swatter, a pillow, and even an ashtray. But these are the battle scars that make you a legend in the journal community and this brave little black book is an inspiration to many.

This Woman is equally as brave, the self-inflicted tattoo on her finger the only reminder needed that her heart beats in order to connect those words with their destiny - the notebook. Pen to paper every day, wherever she finds her day beginning and ending. Tonight she's bedded down beside a dumpster, beneath the brick skin of an apartment - ever so grateful for the shelter as snow begins to dance through the sky.

Estranged family members put the blame for her condition on the journal, her bizarre passion for "Work that don't make money" as her mother screamed years ago...the last time she saw her face to face. With her words only existing in journals, she doesn't have much hope of ever making money. Yet she dreams that long after she dies, some inspired soul will type out all she has written; preserving her experience and somehow making her life worth something.

The noise of the bar sharing the alleyway with the apartment has faded, leaving her with only the sound of her pen grinding away on the paper of her leather-bound partner. The cover black as night, the ivory pages white as snow, and the blue ink matching her weary eyes lost in the depths of her soul. The snow picks up the pace, exchanging its waltz for a high-tempo salsa coming down in flamenco blankets.

A snowplow passes by, illuminating her weather-beaten face that is aged beyond its years by life on the street. Something in the noise of the snowplow finally puts the words to bed, her children who never want to sleep. She hastily slips the glove on her painfully numb hand and drops the pen into the inner pocket of the Little Black Book.

With the care of a mother, she puts the beloved notebook in her jacket's breast pocket before rushing to stuff the remainder of her sleeping bag with newspaper. The familiar stench of the blanket covers her face, in this weather uncovered skin can quickly lead to hypothermia. Laying down in the fetal position she makes peace with the likelihood that she might not make it through the night. With dreams of sipping on a margarita in heaven while the warm sun keeps the words away, she falls asleep with the all too familiar shivering.

Softly sleeping over her heart, the Journal dreams sweetly of one day giving his own commencement speech. Passing down his wisdom from these days on the street with the passionate ‘hand who holds the pen’ enduring every level of hardship she has described within those pages. Unified through experience, the keeper of all her thoughts, all her dreams, all her genius. The love for the hand and the stick and poke tattoo that speaks of their unifying dance - the miracle that is a pen meeting paper, be it lined, gridded, or blank.

Oblivious to the woman sleeping behind the dumpster, a Bartender carries a bin full of glass bottles to their doom. The loud cascading crash of glass spills the margarita in her dreams and makes her scream into reality, jarring the Journal awake and scaring the Bartender momentarily out of his body: "Oh my god! I'm so sorry, I didn't see you sleeping there!"

The Bartender shivers in a mix of guilt and cold as he watches the woman shuddering from the rude awakening. The grimy sleeping location she chose is a harsh reality to the thesis he's writing about American Homelessness. She begins to gather her belongings in the assumption of a forced migration that causes the Bartender to be overcome with pity. Her face reminds him of his aunt who passed away earlier in the year, and his passion for the unfortunate makes him speak up: "It is below freezing already, and only getting colder tonight. You don't have a warmer place to be?"

Her hardened eyes glare back at him before she speaks: "If I did, don't you think I would be there?" This retort makes his kindness feel foolish but nonetheless, he perseveres. "The trash gets picked up here in just a handful of hours... It wouldn't be a good place to be... if you promise to leave early in the morning I can let you sleep in my bar over there."

But it isn't his bar. Just a workplace while he finishes school, yet his big heart tells him it is absolutely worth the risk of being fired. He is certain karma would curse him out of a successful thesis if he let this woman shiver into an early death. She stares at him thinking, yet even the momentary movement of the blanket from her face has made her nose go numb. The decision is not a hard one to make.

She follows him, wheeling her suitcase loaded with full journals behind her. He leads them into the dive bar and past the kitchen - into the janitorial storage closet. "I'm coming in to open at ten in the morning, my manager comes in a little later and would certainly fire me for this so please be sure to be gone by then." With a solemn nod, she agrees and steps into the closet. "I'll be right back with some moving blankets you can use for padding."

She sets her belongings in a small clearing and sits on a stack of milk crates, pulling out the journal to note the bizarre kindness of the Bartender. He soon returns with the blankets and an electric heater. "You're lucky, I'd forgotten we have this heater!" Before she can respond he lays the blankets down and plugs the heater into an outlet connected to the pull-string light bulb hanging from the ceiling.

Finishing with his setup, he finally notices she is writing in a little black pocket journal. He has no way of seeing it, but the Journal is smiling back in honest appreciation of his kind soul. The little black book was very fearful of his beloved perishing in the night, hearing her heartbeat come to a stop has always been one of the horrors on the back page of the mind. With that fear fading for one night, the Journal wishes for a way to show his appreciation for them both.

"What is it that you write?" He asks full of wonder. She glares back at him, never having been asked such a question with any sort of positivity behind it. "Just things about my life, the experience of sleeping behind dumpsters and such."

A smile reaches across his face, in awe of the rare breed in front of him, not connecting in his mind that she could in fact help him with his thesis. "That is pretty amazing, I commend you for that. Writing isn't so easy." She scoffs at the remark - writing is the only thing that comes easy for her, perhaps too easy. Naturally, he takes this as a recommendation to leave her be.

"I'm going to go home, can I get you anything? Do you want water? There is a bathroom around the corner if you need it." Offering so much to her, fear suddenly crosses his mind that she may take advantage of his kindness...but he's come this far and it is clear she's in dire need.

She shakes her head with the same solemn frown and says, "Thank you so much for your kindness." Tears welling in her eyes. This moment makes the fear in the back of his head subside, and he responds with a nod and an exhausted smile before stepping away slightly. "I will see you in the morning if you stick around. Keep in mind there are cameras in the bar so please avoid that area. But sleep well."

She nods and goes back to writing, he watches her for a beat before walking off toward his life. The notebook watches in appreciation wondering if the Bartender has a diary of his own back home. What it must be like to live in partnership with a hand who has a home. Are all journals used as fly swatters and ashtrays? Are they kept in more comfortable places than jacket pockets? There is no use in wondering about the realities of other diaries, nothing could take away from the love he has for his pen-holding hand nor the gratitude he has for her safety - even if it is only for the night.

The divine intervention of the Bartender all caught up in her book, she moves to solidify her bed for the evening. Processing the lack of need for newspapers, or even the stinky face blanket. In the storage closet, it feels like summer and she is beyond happy to save herself one more night of falling asleep shivering.

No matter how many yoga classes or meditation experiences the Bartender has endured, he still lacks an understanding of the universe and its strange timing. This led to anger when he arose in the morning late for his shift, the anger multiplied as he found his car to have been locked in a snowdrift on the street created by the work of the plows overnight. His commute would now be wrought with fear of being fired.

The storage closet was full of mutual dreams between the Journal and the Hand. Giant teddy bears working on typewriters in a bullpen while their editors, larger stuffed giraffes pace back and forth. The recurring archetypes of editors in this duo's dreams, their only need in the world. A roof over their head would be nice but in that there are more excuses not to write, an editor only brings the opposite. While in the midst of a lecture from a tie-clad giraffe regarding run-on sentences she awoke to the harsh voice of an older man screaming into her makeshift domicile.

Nothing offends a manager more than being forced to open up, especially due to a late employee. The anger doubled and quickly tripled into fury upon opening the storage closet to find a homeless woman snoring between cleaning supplies.

"This is trespassing! I don't care how you got in here, I am calling the police!" The manager furiously dials on his cellphone while she hastily gets her things together. "You're not going anywhere until the police arrive!" He shrieks.

Assuming jail would separate her from all journals and impede the writing, she's always been horrified by the idea. This horror made it impossible for her to imagine waiting for the police and gave her one clear action...

In the swift movement of escape, our Little Black Book slips away from her, bouncing onto the floor of the closet. In emergency mode she doesn't notice her darling's plunge to the ground, leaving the Journal to watch in dread as she swings her suitcase at the Manager and forces herself past him.

The Manager hits the floor with a moan--sending his phone bouncing on the hard linoleum. Without looking back she sprints out of the bar and into the bright white snowy world beyond; moving as quickly as she can through the snow and into the safe anonymity the streets bring.

Spewing expletives offensive to the Journal, the Manager gets up and speeds off with flustered resolve. The voice and mustache of the legendary diary from the commencement inspires our notebook to action; sprouting its arms and legs for the first time in months, standing up and running off to hide behind a jug of bleach. A move proven to be smart as the Manager returns to search for clues.

By the time the Bartender arrives at the bar, police cars are parked out front. He enters to find the harsh reality of his random act of kindness. The Manager leads him to the storage closet and lectures him regarding irresponsibility, eventually informing him of his need to file for unemployment. Before he can leave, the police will require a chat.

Relying on trained instinct from the Journal Academy, the notebook bravely sprints after the feet of the Bartender. Sneakily keeping to the shadows of the bar knowing that to be seen running would surely cause the far worse catastrophe of giving someone a heart attack. Being found by the wrong party would also lead to disaster for his beloved ‘Hand who holds the pen’; this is a life or death moment the notebook realizes as it bounds along toward the only shot of redemption.

The police, having heard of the bartender's firing, decided to take it easy on him. Not giving fault for helping a woman in need, only requesting that the bartender report any information he may have on her whereabouts. Just as they’re wrapping up their conversation, the Journal risks it all with a sprint across a patch of daylight. Motion in the policeman's periphery leads him to look down just after the Little Black Book slides to a stop at the Bartender's feet.

"Sir, you dropped your notebook." The officer says while handing his card to the Bartender. Shock spreads across his face as he picks up the book, instantly realizing it was the Woman's. "That is yours isn't it?" The cop says, reading his face. "Oh yes, I must have dropped it. Thank you, officer." He says with a smile, slipping the diary in his pocket.

Per the request of the Manager, the police encourage the Bartender out into the snow and bid him farewell as they head off in search of a homeless woman with a suitcase and blue eyes. The Bartender walks away swiftly, too busy in lost in fascination with the pocket journal to worry about being fired. Only a name but no form of contact exists written on the flyleaf, but it is a clue to aid in linking this book of thoughts to its rightful owner.

The rightful owner is currently dragging her suitcase through the snow. Not thinking of all the full journals she has with her, only her last one which held the best of the words to date. More importantly, that Journal still had space to write in and after such a dramatic experience the words were begging to come out. But she was done with the words, certain she wanted to finally end her writing career--walking fast as possible to an overpass.

While in the back of a rideshare on the way home, the Bartender flips through the pages of the Little Black Book. His eyes alight with inspiration from the words written with surprisingly neat handwriting. The many loose ends and what-ifs he'd been struggling with in his thesis were starting to work out, her words the key to the locked doors of his mind. He is lost in awe when the journal suddenly slips from his hands, after picking it up he glances out the window...

"STOP! LET ME OUT HERE!" The Bartender screams, scaring the driver into hitting the brakes which send the car sliding forward on the overpass. "Jeez man! You ain't gotta yell at me!" The driver screamed, but it didn't matter. The Bartender was already out the door, moving through the snow toward the Journal's beloved.

She didn't believe him when he explained the manager didn’t matter and she thought him to be delusional when he spoke of the Journal's sudden appearance at his feet. But none of that mattered when he spoke of the magic in her words, the second most surreal moment of her life.

When the Bartender described his passion for the homeless and his dreams of being a literary editor it was the most surreal moment of her life. Every moment after that was forever different for both of them, the former bartender would become an Editor and the former homeless scribbler would become known as a Writer.

On their first finished novel, they were awarded $40,000...they split it 50/50. That was the first flake in a snowfall of literary success, driving both of them into wealth and fame. Their work led to the inception of many laws that were eventually passed to aid the homeless, solidifying their roles as heroes to the unfortunate.

Framed above her desk, near a window that overlooks the ocean, is the Little Black Book that brought them together. One of the most famous of all the notebooks in the hall of fame, our brave little diary with a mustache of its own finally got to give a commencement speech:

"Go forward, my young Journal brothers and sisters, never forgetting that no matter your hardships, summer always comes for everyone - stand by your hand through thick and thin. Remember your mantra: When a Journal is needed, the Journal abides."

The End.