Notebooks

Finished Albert Camus’ Notebooks, 1935-1942, which he ended with: “What bars our way makes us travel along it.” With the way things are going, I don’t think I’m still capable of keeping a notebook. This laptop (okay, it’s still a “notebook”) is shaping me with the kind of discipline that began as something very strange, but now deliberately familiar, making it not so easy for me to re-member that part of myself who used to cherish the feel of holding a pen and scribbling through pages of my hardcover notebooks, sometimes slowly, but often hurried, tensed, filled with lust for words. My only consolation: with the few pesos I’m saving for pens and papers I no longer need (except for checking and recording students’ papers and class attendance), I’ll buy additional digital space. I’ve been eyeing an IBM Thinkpad internal dvd-writer for some time now.