The Lost Jotters

More things are happening, more than anyone will ever say.

Blue cover. Ragged. The Lomond Series. The corners hung like the ears of a tired dog. It lay on a green bench, the paint cracked and flaking, the wind worrying it’s pages without direction.

I saw it and walked past.

Then I stopped. It came sharp, like a stitch in the side. I turned, went back, picked it up. Not thinking after that. I curled it and pushed it into my jacket. It fitted, nearly. I pressed the shape of it flat with my hand and walked on, the same pace as before, through the iron gates and toward the busier streets where things felt safer, though I couldn’t have said why.

I am not a thief. I take what comes. Sometimes that means things left behind. Strays.

The rain began. Good timing, I thought. A minute more and the book would have been ruined; ink running, pages swelling. I kept a hand over my pocket, shielding it as I walked.

A headline outside a newsagent caught my eye, something about human remains found by the water. I did not stop. I remembered it anyway.

At the greengrocer I bought peppers, three colours, grapes, onions, apples, garlic. No plan for them. Just the sense that later I would cook something. The note book was already working on me. I felt it sitting there.

A man played violin on the corner. Blind, or near enough. I gave him a coin. He did not acknowledge it. The tune stayed with me but I could not name it.

I bought wine next door. Red. The shops were small here, each one holding its ground. It felt honest, though maybe it was only the look of it. Shop local but pay the price.

I took a bus. First one that came. Asked for a cheap fare and hoped it went somewhere I knew. Phones were less evolved then. They were in boxes or offices. On green hospital walls. Cash was king. But the throne was rotting away.

After a while I knew where I was. Got off. The rain had passed. Streets drying. School traffic building. I walked without thinking much, turning left, then right, then left again. Houses changed around me, brick, stone, concrete, trees holding them apart like quiet arguments. No paperwork.

At the gate I knew I was home. I can’t forget.

Inside, I poured wine. The glass was clean. I took the jotter out and set it on the table. It began to open on its own, slow. How’s that? Maybe my mind is playing a trick. Can that even be recognized as a thing?

In the kitchen I washed the vegetables. Cut them clean. Onion fine, peppers larger. Colours spread across the board. Another glass of wine. Buzzin’. Quietly.

In another life I’d be a chef. Kind but intolerant of the public and their opinions. I’d work away, behind a steel screen.

The radio spoke about traffic somewhere, not far away. I did not listen.

There was chicken in the fridge. I cooked it with the vegetables. Ate it standing at first, then sitting. A bad habit I know. It was good enough.

After, I sat on the couch and looked at the book. It had been well used. Pages torn. Marks everywhere. It felt like something that had already lived a full life. Used up all the words too.

Homework can be poetry and poetry might be homework.

The radio played a song about love lost. I let it pass.

I thought of another town for a while. Streets, wind, the way corners feel when you turn them. That odd feeling. Then I slept.

Morning came without fuss.

I ate at a fast food place. Coffee, something hot. Reading parts of a ragged morning paper, skipped most of it. That is how I read those things. Ragged mornings.

In the car park I saw another one.

Same blue. Same shape. Sticking out of a bin like it wanted out.

I took it. Quick, clean. No one stopped me. It went into my pocket, where the first had hidden.

Back home they lay together on the table. One older, softer in colour. Both quiet.

I did not open them. I thought about those human remains.

On impulse I booked a flight. No reason that would hold up under questioning. A place I had not been. That was enough.

The rest of the day went slowly. Tea. Television without sound. Waiting without knowing for what.

At the airport there were the usual types of people. Standing, moving, looking at things that told them where to go. I watched them instead of reading.

Over on one of those uncomfortable benches. A familiar blue. A jotter. Face down.

I moved in. Now I had it.

On the plane I slept some. Looked out at the clouds. They were flat and unfinished.

Their purpose is to shield and shade and move the water around. Economy class.

Nobody congratulates them after a big shipment is done.

Landing came and went. No applause.

A taxi took me through rain into a place that looked like many places. Roads, signs, trees that could not care.

The hotel room was simple. Bed. Chair. Television.

I sat and watched the news in a language I did not follow. Talking heads and accidents. World events. It moved past me like the deadest weather.

Humans remain.

There is always more happening than anyone will ever say. Most of it goes unseen. It stays somewhere out there, in that space between things, where nothing quite settles.

Like a book left on a bench. In a bin. Forgotten at an airport.

These things I collect.