My friend from seminary sent me a writing prompt called “ list essay” which I tried out about the contents of my tattered and well-loved black Moleskine notebook.
Things I wrote
A letter from 2008 to my friend Maree with a flower pressed into the folds, left unposted. Challah bread recipe including a sketch of how to braid the ends, the page removed and stained from handling. Phone numbers of all the people I called regularly one year. School loan confirmation numbers haphazardly scrawled. Diary of three days staying at a Benedictine abbey in Three Rivers, Michigan. Books I wanted to read before enrolling at seminary. All my confusion about why the world was the way it was.
Quotes by Rainer Maria Rilke, Henri Nouwen, and Annie Dillard that presented life without explaining it. My curriculum when I taught 9th and 11th grade English for 3 months. Camping gear, a new wardrobe, and running shoes to purchase after living out of suitcases for two years. Three pages of an hour long exercise in steam of consciousness. Every poem I read for seven years that made my heart ache in the best way. Class notes from two days when I forgot to buy school supplies in the fall of 2012. What I wouldn’t do since I was still not ready to write what I would yet do.
Trembling words I wrote swiftly without a concept of what they could become later, a poem or something else. Itinerary for a week long trip to Princeton, NJ to New York, NY to Boston, MA using train, bus, and subways. Receipt of my third largest investment, after my college education and my laptop: my rainy gray Cannondale. Psalms that are begging to be put to memory. My words into existence.
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