A new $12

#1 -- "Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for your own joy."

So it is probably early on in the morning of November 24, 1987 that the destiny for this post was yielded to the world, a small baby girl born, all grown up twenty-two years later and back home from New York for a birthday celebration at a bar, coming to be known fictitiously as Block.

So a span of said time goes by. I meet this girl and friends and it is time to go. We walk along, in the rain, we take the bridge over the tracks.

I believe this type of thought is written in the notebook. But I don’t know where that notebook is. So that is why I’m hoping that my memory serves me correctly, it is doing ok so far, must not get too far ahead of myself now, so we keep walking.

I list off seven vices I have, aloud to the world to hear as we walk, still raining, raining heavy for so late in November I feel like, to Sam and Jordan and her friend who clearly was going to meet her man friend and leave us afterwards but they know vice is true so we finally arrive to perpetuate number three, drinking.

We get to the Bar.
We drink at the Bar.
We play darts. I consume one beer. The game of team cricket goes on forever, too long for an average attention span.

Jordan knows a lot of wonderful people, including Skeet, Ronko, Snoop, and Brent (I think), who all show up after a lot of frustrating texting between Skeet and Jordan.

I am taking notes, as per usual in bars, no longer finding the act of drinking exciting, only the meager bit of alcohol I can afford entering my bloodstream to be more appealing than the jumbled notes. I also encourage others to write something down – one girl is a journalism student who writes ten pages magnificently fast – too fast for Sam and I, but she is stymied on writing outside of a professional environment so I pass the notebook off to Skeet, he writes something? Or does Snoop?

Jordan is getting about ready to move. I don’t remember if we move. I think we go to Blarney, I really don’t remember anything then. Thus the notebook.

Jordan is not feeling superb as it often goes on a birthday.
It is still raining.
Jordan has heels on which pain her feet so I give her a piggy back ride.
Up and over the train bridge again, she on my back like a heavy canoe across a portage, running now to ease the pain and a desire of my own to get out of the rain, which we do.

We wake Leighton up, he is studying, studying away even in his dreams.
I fall asleep.

I write like Garrison Keillor, at least I hope I do, because I bring myself back on track here.

I lost the notebook. I have my theories – Skeet still has it or I left it at the bar (set it down subconsciously for others to have forever and read my thoughts on what it was like to sit in a deer stand for hours and what I saw; I hope you enjoy them, and my climactic descriptions of the shot and bullet through the heart of a doe) or I lost it giving piggy back rides. I lost it for a reason.

I lost it so I could write this.

I lost it so I could by four new little black books at $12 apiece to replace one that was lost, to restart chapter six, to bury away any panic of losing it again, to always have a spare.

I was without a life for a few days there. I went back to search for it the next day, retracing my steps, so many steps, nothing. I accepted loss forever (#19).