A$$-pocket notebook as a Cloud Atlas

1. "I asked, how is knowledge found?" "You must learn how to read, little sister."

2. "We are only what we know, and I wished to be much more than I was, sorely."

3. "What was knowledge for, I would ask myself, if I could not use it to better my existence?"

I carry around a small, black notebook in my back pocket. Or, as we've said here, quoting R.L. Burnside, my "ass pocket." My notebook and a pen are more likely than my wallet to be found on me in a search.

The ass-pocket notebook is scrawled through with quotes, inspirations, existential questions, landmarks, grocery lists, reading and music recommendations, notes jotted from meetings. When I flip back through it, I can remember where I was or what I was thinking when I read the pages forward. If I can read my writing.

We've talked about Junot Diaz here already. The other mind-blowing contemporary novelist who has been rewiring my brain is David Mitchell, as I am on the home stretch of his "Cloud Atlas." There is no spoiler here, I'm not talking plot twists or reviewing the book. But as I got to the section called, "An Orison of Sonmi-451," I found myself filling my ass-pocket notebook with passages like the three above.

Sonmi as a character is coming to things like knowledge, reading, nature and the world outside for the first time, and as such appreciates things in a way that most of us have long forgotten or taken for granted. That echoes one of my favorite concepts/lenses for looking at life and the world, "Beginner's Mind."

I've pondered the title, "Cloud Atlas" a bit, which I more than dig. The fruitless, frustrating mess of trying to map the moving, shifting, swirling clouds. Why would anyone put themselves through that? But then, you have the mornings or evenings when the clouds are painted with sun, and even though you know there can be no holding it together, no way to make it stay; you know that by the time you try to tell someone about it, just to get them to look it will be gone.

You know there is no point. But you have to do it anyway. You have to try. And maybe "Art" with a capital "A," maybe that's what Art is, just a cloud atlas. Just an attempt to map the unmappable.

And that's why I carry the ass-pocket notebook. For those times, when the sun-painted clouds need mapping.

An as$ pocket of wonder *

Sometimes I want one book. One book that fits into a pocket (ass pocket, or thigh or even jacket) that I can carry with me and pull out in case of boredom or stagnation; a book that will deliver instant wonder, instant inspiration; a book that induces reverie, reflections on beauty and time; turns me on; and provides both telescope and microscope into existence.

I have a few candidates for the position of carry-all pocket book: Robert Hass's Praise, W.S. Merwin's Shadow of Sirius, will be auditioning Charles Simic's The World Doesn't End.

It's like carrying an aesthetic Swiss Army knife, including a bottle opener because sometimes twist off inspiration just doesn't cut it.

This is a book that you have to be able to get something out of from just reading a page or two. Like with two girls napping in the back seat while wife (or husband) runs into a store. Like just stopped through the coffee shop and have 10-15 minutes to yourself.

It has to be dense, exploratory, experimental, funny, demand and reward re-reading and pondering and memorizing and maybe even reading out loud (though probably not in a mall).

Yeah, to have one book like that. One ass pocket of wonder and inspiration. A Linus Van Pelt security blanket of a book. Sometimes I think that would be pretty cool.

* Title with a nod to R.L. Burnside, whose "A*s pocket of whiskey" remains one of my all-time favorite album titles