Does That Say “mayor” Or “major”?

27th January, 2010 2 Comments

I snapped this photo the other morning on the subway.  The guy filled up about four pages in his Moleskine with notes on the book he was reading about Tarkovsky.  Read, pull notebook and pen out of pocket, write, return notebook and pen to pocket.  Repeat.

While I see a lot of readers during my commutes, I rarely see people taking notes about what they are reading.  Writing in a moving vehicle is not easy.  There are plenty of women who put on their make-up while on the trains, they carefully wait, feeling each bump and jolt before finding the perfect moment to apply their mascara.  Often, those moments happen while the train is in the station.  

Unlike applying one’s face, capturing one’s thoughts has an urgency to it–it cannot wait until pulling into the next station and stopping.  There is also the desire to capture an idea immediately in order to continue reading. 

While I do know avid note takers, I do not know many.  When I see these rare beasts on the subway, I want to peer over their shoulder and see what ideas they are capturing.  Some people have small handwriting in neat little rows.  Others have arrows and blocks and scratches all over the place.  This gentleman’s writing was so compact and orderly, perfect lines stretching across the page with the occasional scribbled out word.

Until the past year, I was never a note-taker.  Read a book, maybe pause to ponder, and then move on.  Note-taking has forced me to slow down a little and really focus on the words and their meaning.  While I do eventually stop thinking so actively about a particular book or idea, I do find that the basis of what was being said sticks with me longer.  It’s gotten to the point where I’ll write on just about anything–notepaper, envelopes, in a journal–just to capture and idea.  And the idea can be anything–a quote, a continuation and break down to help myself understand, diagrams, suggestions for things to share here.

Of the types of note takers, I am the second sort.  A mess of scribbles, circlings, and exclamation marks trying to make a point. Sometimes re-reading my notes a few months after they have graced the page, I have no clue what I was trying to say.  Other times the notes re-inspire me to learn about something further or direct me to something new.  In addition to the notes, books become riddled with sticky tabs, numbered and referenced in the notes.

But I am not good at writing on the subway.  My chicken scratching is hard enough to read when I write while sitting at a table; I’d never make out a thing if I wrote while the train rolls on.

Samara O’Shea, author of For the Love of Letters and Note to Self has recently started writing on Tranquility du Jour and recently posted about some letters she had received.  One letter was from a gentleman prolific in calligraphy.  Years ago I studied the art.  While I became fairly decent at it, I never remotely reached the skill this gentleman possesses.  Looking over my notes, I finally bought a children’s pad of lined paper in which to reform my handwriting into something cleaner as well as to take up the calligraphy pen again.  While this might make my letters and memos a little more legible, I doubt I’ll ever be talented enough to whip out a pen on the train.  While I occasionally jump out of the shower or crawl out of bed in the middle of the night to find a pen, on the subway I think I’ll stick to sending myself emails from my phone.

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