The Notebook

My fingers caress it, cherishing the worn warm softness of the oilcloth cover, delighting in the familiarity of feel, the slight unevenness here and there from time spent nestled in bags, pockets, or pressed against erratic surfaces. This paper child of mine, which once was lost but now is found, is filled with memories both tangible and ephemeral… It’s witness to a journey, an adventure, a transformation.

My touch finds the elastic closure, unlatches the contents, lets my pages open to the day and reveal their magic…

But here. Stretch out your hand. Hold it. Feel how it fits itself into your palm? See how the first sketches, so unsure, tentative of stroke, stumble with their subjects, skew proportions and perspectives, yet dare to try?

See how, slowly, with the turning of the pages, colours find more confidence, lines more power, translating the seen to scene, the imagined into detail? And here, look, the day my inked lines coalesce into their purpose: the day The Tale was born.

It had no inkling then of destiny, of course. Fame, fortune, and its birthright of fantastical lands all still lay far in the future. But see? Here his eyes open, this little being, fronded by ferns and the lightest touch of green, born of a doodle and noncholant nib. I’d simply been exploring newly-purchased colours. But here, see how the ink breathes life into the unfurling narrative, following my young one across the pages, into dells and mysteries, friendships and the fabulous.

The pages, ivory backgrounds to his vibrant existence, turn his world.

But that of course is where he would have stayed, shy, safe, unseen… and trapped within the covers of his notebook home. He and I would have explored his world of whimsy in each other’s company, he leading me to meet his friends in sketched dimensions, unsuspected and unperceived by this other world, which we call real.

But see, here, look. No, not there. Here. Here where that faint faded shading betrays a long-gone splash of mud. Yes, there, that’s right. Feel how the faintest rippling of the page still betrays that fateful encounter with the earthy wet. Past, but not forgotten.

How could it be? For here this child of ink and lines and imagination took his tumble. Out of my pocket, out of the safe space next to my heart, into that real world. The terrifying world, where scale is not constrained by the length and breadth of a notebook’s spread, nor mitigated by the charm of fancy and a loving pen. Worse, for the first time in his paper life, I had, it seemed, abandoned him: heedless of his loss, oblivious to his fall onto that wet pavement.

He might have been heartened, later that night, to know of my frantic searches for him. Upending my bags, poring through my pockets, double-checking. Retracing what steps I could remember: down the stairs, out into the streetlamped streets, peering back and forth in forlorn hope that one of those inky nighttime shadows would resolve into the black of my beloved notebook. But the passageways were empty, each shadow revealed to be mere detritus of society or trick of angle: the cobbles bare of my pages and their precious world. His loss was mourned, played, and replayed again, under the light of a cold moon and a trillion callous stars. Yet it had not been indifference which had abandoned my little creation: merely an unzipped pocket and generous trick of fate.

Yes, generous. But such joyful future was still unguessed by us that night. I, grieving for that part of me which I had shared with paper: he, thrown into such an unfamiliar world. Yes, he: for have you not understood? From that first time my pen allowed his eyes to open, there on my page, he and his world took breath, on my paper and in my heart, taking on a life of their own, allowing me to share their enchanted domain with them.

And… with you.

For of course your lookout from Time’s frontier is in a different when from then. You know what we did not, that night.

How my notebook was not lost but rescued; how the hand which picked it up was his. (How odd to remember that your grandfather was still a stranger then. How times change!). You know how his kindly-meant leafing through of pages, to find a clue to whose satchel, pouch, or pocket it might have belonged, led him instead to fall in love with my imagination’s little world. You know how his intent merely to return a mislaid notebook turned instead into a quest: to find an author and obtain permission to share that notebook’s contents with the joyous-hearted across all continents.

And would you be surprised to know? That yes, of course I found the fame dazzling—who wouldn’t!—and the fortune (I am not sure whether you can conceive of the difference which $20,000 could make to a person back then!) and feel blessed beyond words to have met so many new and wonderful friends (yes, including you-know-who.) But… over and above all those… one of my greatest delights was the simplest one of them all: it was being reunited with my realm, which had become so alive to me. That imaginary dimension which, thanks to my notebook’s slip onto mud-splattered sidewalk, chance finding and resulting publication, befriended and inspired so much of the “real” world too.

We have not been parted since then, although that first precious notebook—yes, that very one which I placed into your hands a few minutes ago—usually basks in grand retirement on my shelf, while page after page, adventure after adventure, book after oilclothed notebook have taken their successive places in my zipped pocket, next to my heart, awaiting their metamorphosis: from blank, to filled with whimsy, and wonder, and soul-singing hues.

And just as I have transformed them, so they, in turn, have transformed me.