The Book on the Dresser

It seemed unremarkable, this little black book sitting on my dresser. I was much more concerned with other more pressing topics, like what day is it? Have I missed any important appointments? How bad do I actually feel? Can I remember everything from last night? Can I remember anything? You know, all the critical questions that welcome you back from a night of indulgence.

According to my phone it was 7:30 AM, Saturday. Fragments of memory started to reveal themselves. I went out last night. I went out to celebrate? No, that wasn’t it. I went out to wallow. I’d been fired the day before. I didn't know how I'd make rent in two weeks or how I'd eat.

To stop my mind from racing, I scanned social media, flooding my consciousness with digital reality that could help me escape from the real one. But there was a nagging sensation in the back of my mind. When had I put that little black book there?

I didn’t want to do the mental gymnastics of sorting through my hazy, morning after memory, so I dismissed it. A post from a friend of mine caught my attention, it was a picture of himself holding a self-help book as a way of signaling some new found enlightenment. The caption read, “sometimes all you need is the right book to change your life.” I glanced back over at the little book lying on the dresser.

I took a deep breath. It had to be a coincidence. My ex-girlfriend posted a new story, which would be good for a distraction. She liked to broadcast every aspect of her personal romantic life. When things were going well she posted things like “Love is the only thing that the more you give the more you have.” When she was fighting with her boyfriend or going through a breakup, she posted messages like “pressure makes diamonds” or “some wounds, time can’t heal.” This day she posted, “When the universe gives you a gift, open it,” and the nagging sensation started becoming a nagging compulsion.

There had to be an explanation for this book. I thought through the day and night before, but my memory wouldn’t give up its secrets. I cleaned my sock drawer recently, it could have been in there and I could have pulled it out and put it on the dresser because I didn’t want to forget it. That felt like a memory. Or was it imagination?

I also remembered going through my glove box and looking for my car insurance paperwork, finding a little black notebook and slipping it into my pocket. The things in my pocket tended to end up on my dresser.

I contemplated whether I was making up memories to justify the presence of the book, or if the presence of the book was reminding me of things. I preferred the latter, because the former made my stomach turn. There was an explanation for the book.

I just needed to open it. Every few months or so I would buy another little notebook at the bookstore and decide to pour my heart into it, a way to purge all the thoughts and feelings I didn’t know how to process. Within a few days I would forget to carry it around and a few days after that I’d lose it, until it would resurface months or years later. I would find a half filled or quarter filled notebook that I’d hope contained some sort of profound observations, but was mostly random emotions, telephone numbers and grocery lists. This notebook had to be one of those.

I stood up and my body felt surprisingly functional. I grabbed the notebook off the dresser and flipped to the middle section, where I figured the pages would be blank to remind me how silly I was. But it was filled, and not with random fragments of ideas or practical needs. It was neatly written, listed as bullet points as if it were a set of instructions. And it was my handwriting. I stopped at the first passage that caught my eye, which said:

It’s surprisingly easy to forget that the most important thing to do with any task is to start at the beginning.

I snapped the book closed. Was it possible that I finished one? Obviously, I did, there’s a filled notebook in front of me. But bullet points? That didn’t ring any bells.

I opened it again, committed to not be deterred by some coincidence. If I had read past that one sentence, I’m sure I would have realized that it was only cosmetically related to my situation. I was probably talking about some chore I completed and how starting at the beginning was surprisingly easy to overlook. So, I’ll read from the beginning. It said:

First thing’s first, you must read this in order. Reading ahead will confuse you.

It was my handwriting, but it was not my voice. When did I write this?

Don’t worry about how something exists, but how you exist with it. If it’s a warm, sunny day in January, don’t think too much about how it’s warm, just enjoy the sun. It doesn’t really matter how or why you wrote this, just be assured, some version of you, which may or may not exist anymore, was inspired and had the foresight or hindsight to write some instructions so you could start making progress.

This was not how I think. Some version of me? Progress toward what? There is one version of me. There has always been one version of me. Right? I read on.

There is a simple explanation for everything. But the simple explanation isn’t always the right one, so you’re going to have decide whether you want the easy choice or the right one.

I heard a knock at my front door, so I quickly got dressed and rushed out to answer it. When I opened the door a man in a black suit with a black fedora stood attentively. He glanced down at my hand, looking hard at the notebook.

“Mr. Martin,” he says, “I’m Dr. James Mayfield, may I come in?”

Without thinking, I crack the door and let him in, overwhelmed by the churning in my head and stomach.

“I’m sure you’ve got a lot of questions,” he said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You found the notebook. That’s it, right there, right?” He asked gesturing toward my hand.

I nodded.

“I’ve come to see if I can buy it from you,” he said.

“Why do you want my notebook?” I asked.

“It’s not exactly your notebook.” He said, sitting down at my kitchen table. He pushed aside the half-finished pizza from the night before. I should have felt embarrassed, but I had other things on my mind.

“It looks like mine,” I said.

“Do you remember writing anything in it?” He asked.

“Not exactly, do you remember everything you’ve written?” I asked in response.

“Do you remember that psychology experiment you’d signed up for a few months ago?” He asked. I was surprised but I did.

“Vaguely,” I said.

“They made you do a writing sample and interviewed you for a few hours?”

“Right,” I said.

“Well, one of the professors was creating an artificial intelligence that could replicate human handwriting and we had it produce notebooks, written in each subject’s style,” he said. His face looked like someone who was lying, but was really good at it. Or he was telling the truth. It was hard to know what to believe.

“But how did it get on my dresser?” I asked, feeling embarrassed immediately after the words left my mouth.

He looked perplexed. “I don’t know how it got on your dresser. You must have put it there.”

“How did I get it?” I asked, the butterflies in my stomach kicking up.

He rolled his eyes. “Didn’t you get a package yesterday? An undergrad mailed them all out in protest.”

I tried to remember, but yesterday was still a blur. The trash. If I had gotten a package the day before, there would be some sort of envelope in the trash.

“Let me check something,” I said walking over to the garbage can.

It was there. A plain white envelope, large enough to hold a little notebook, haphazardly ripped open and lying on the top of the rest of the garbage. I must have opened it after I was already out of it.

“You see,” he said, “now we would very much like to reclaim it.”

I opened the notebook again. It looked like pen written by my hand. The artificial intelligence must have been incredible. The next passage read:

We have to decide to be inspired. Comfort is the enemy of inspiration. Now comes the hard part.

He lifted his satchel and pulled out a folder with my name on it. Inside the folder was a contract and a cashier’s check.

“We are prepared to offer you $20,000 in exchange for the book and a signature promising not to share any of this. We recognize you feel violated, but keep in mind you signed a release which makes that book our legal property,” his eyes met mine and I felt overwhelmed.

I opened the book and looked down again. I could have cleared my credit card debt and done something about that squealing noise my car made when I started it.

“Please don’t read it,” he said. “It’s not yours.”

Trust has always been your issue. Will you trust a stranger or your own voice? Your own words?

“What if I keep the book?” I said.

“I don’t think you understand, you can’t keep the book,” his face hardened.

“So you’ll force me to give it to you?”

“No, but we will find a way to make your life extremely challenging.” He slid over the contract and the check. “Or we can make it much easier.”

Every step will get harder. But it will also get better. What do you really want?

“Do you have any proof?” I asked.

“Yes. The torn envelope in your garbage and the notebook you’re holding filled with words you didn’t write.”

“Do you have anything else?”

He pulled another sheet of paper out of the folder. “This is your signed release.” He paused for a moment. “Everything in that book is gibberish. You look like you had a good time last night, I’m not sure you’re in your right mind.”

He was right. None of this made any sense. Maybe I was crazy. Maybe it was a dream.

Waking up from a dream and returning to sanity is a pleasant thought. But it’s not the right one. What is sanity anyway? Look around, what has sanity gotten you?

My stomach started churning and I felt a rush of adrenaline. My apartment was a mess, I was unemployed, my life was a disappointment. I hated it.

“$20,000 Mr. Martin. It’s a lot of money. We know that could help you.”

This can be the beginning or the end. You decide.

He sat across from me, looking into my eyes aggressively. When it comes to losing your mind, it really doesn’t help to go halfway, I thought. I wasn’t sure how I came to that idea, but it didn’t sound like me either.

“I think I’m going to keep the book,” I felt a wave of panic, or was it excitement? Did I really mean that?

He stared into my eyes for another second before breaking into a smile. “Very good. We will be in touch.”

He walked out without waiting for me to get up. I sat stunned at the table, my mind lagging behind my experience. The next passage read:

And away we go.