Journal #34,629G

You always carry a pen and paper even if just an unread flyer from school, blank on one side, folded twice and stuffed in the pocket alongside a pen. Every autumn you find them in your down vest, square bleached leaves with ink smeared from snow that fell as you struggled to hold the pen with an oversized mitten, walking while writing, to keep from freezing.  Of course, today the note makes no sense at all. Do you save it or throw it away? You already have boxes full of similar things. Entire notebooks, big and small, presents some, the remainder, black and blue and red hardcovers, purchased at Borders (when they were still viable) where cheap blank journals dominated the display just inside the sliding doors. You could never leave without buying several, guilty that of all the thousands of books in the store, you chose the ones with nothing inside.

And so you begin to wonder yet again: Why do we think of each other as one type or another?  Why do we feel such permanence in a forever changing world?  Are we never what we seem to be or only what we seem? How easily a stereotype dissolves into its opposite when we engage in conversation. How else to explain evolution if not for these changes of mind. If it weren't for certain habits, would there be revolutions? Why are you afraid of writing in journals that are too pretty and full of expectation? How long until you learn, it's not so much about convincing others as it is about convincing yourself?