A Pearl of Strings: Notebook Excerpts, Part One

In the early Nineties, when I was more single-mindedly devoted to writing fiction, I thought it might be usefl to sift through my previous years of journals to see what I might find that could be of use for future projects. It was not anentirely futile search, but it did surprise me how little of real value there was. 

Someone once wrote, "Writers’ journals are sacred chaos—raw, unpolished portals into the mind’s wild dance. Unlike polished novels or sculpted poems, these pages pulse with immediacy: scribbled doubts, half-formed dreams, and fleeting epiphanies snatched from the ether. They’re the writer’s petri dish, where ideas mate and mutate, unshackled by perfection’s glare." 

Virginia Woolf once called her diary a “capacious hold-all,” a space to wrestle demons and chase muses. For some, it’s a mirror; for others, a map through creative fog. What follows are a few excerpts from my 1980'a journals. I won't describe ay of this as "glimpses of genius in the rough" but I did find some fragments that might me considered stimulating or amusing.   

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A mind whose feet teetered under the weight of a thousand rickety tensions.

Sometimes life gets in the way of living.  

What do you demean by that?  

How'd they get so jaded?

Waisted Minds slogan: A Waist is a terrible thing to mind.

"Red is the soil of Burma, Red also are its cliffs." (from The Harp of Burma)

The great battle for significance is a battle against irrelevance.

"If I'm so successful, why am I so lonely?"

How to get blessed: Be a blessing.

Why are Texans so Austintatious?

Song of the Matrix

The Four Atomic Sons of Madame Fauvre [title]

Jimmy Johnson's Message to his team after Super Bowl Victory: "This feeling of love that you share right now you will have the rest of your lives."

A man who needs nothing can afford to risk everything.  

Freestyle Frost Flicker --> Name of Product for cleaning windows

"The melancholy of all things done." (Buzz Aldrin, after returning from moon)

"The footprints we left on the moon were not ours but were for all mankind." Aldrin

His blood turned to wine and sang through his veins.

Knitting his brows, he lapsed into an introspective state, his lips moving as one who uttered mystic nonsense.

"I'm gonna max out my Monkey card." (newspeak)

The Power Cafe (name of a restaurant)

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If you're a writer, do you keep a journal for capturing ideas and observations?