About Notebook

well, I just think it would be good if one of us
maybe stood up and said a few words,
or, so as not to involve the police,
at least quietly wrote something down.

-Billy Collins, "Passengers"

I have two somewhat contradictory goals for this blog: I use it as a place for first drafts, small discoveries, the first forms of ideas, yet I also hope to use it as a place to publish writing to an audience, however small, in order to stir up feedback and criticism. It's both an informal travelogue of my life and and approach at something more defined and analyzed. The content of the Notebook will be observations or ideas taking their first wobbly shapes--"Notes"--and more polished first drafts--"Notebooks." Posts may be the first attempt at the conclusion of an op-ed piece, the synthesis of my take on a book or movie, perhaps the first paragraph of a novel I'll write in thirty years (well, anything's possible.) I can't promise regularity, but I can promise activity--restless mind machinery must spin and produce one way or another. To anyone able to tolerate this kind of neurotic half-baked tomfoolery, read along and let me know what you think.