Journals

A short memoir I turned in for a class. Enjoy.
--------------------

The journals I purchased were bright red: three, leather bound, average journals. I held each one for a moment or two, smelling and caressing it like a newborn child. These were my message-in-a-bottle. These would save me.
I practiced my penmanship on sheets of paper before committing it to the inside covers of the journal. The message was this:
Hello-
This is now your journal. It has been loved by someone else, possibly a few “someone else”s, and now it has found you.
Read the other entries, and add your own. A photo, a story, a piece of advice, a drawing; it doesn’t matter. When you are finished, give me to someone you know or leave me in a public place.
Someone is trying to reach out, and you can reach back. Now is your chance.
I had been living in Sacramento for two months before I came up with this idea. I had been writing music everyday, my lyrics consisting of pleasant situations and serendipitous circumstances, and suddenly was inspired with the idea to reach out to those around me. It came to me as if in a dream: walking down the street and seeing a bright red journal with the words “PICK ME UP” printed boldly on the cover. In the dream I pick it up. Inside are pages of advice, printed or typed or scrawled. Each page a different color ink, a different story. Crayon drawings a child. A page with nothing but a photograph of a happy couple. The very last page had the request:
When completely filled, call this number- (760)580-7982
I left the first one outside of a Methodist Church. The space was being used for support groups, and I had just left the one for Bipolar disorder. Everyone in the room was just like me, but we were not united. I did not feel a strength and common front against insanity. I left the meeting simply aware of all the crazy people out there.
Aching for human contact, I left the first one on a bench. I peered around me into the fading light to make sure no one knew it was me who left it. I needed anonymous friendship. I didn’t want anymore friends who approached me because of the band on my t-shirt or the shoes on my feet. Regardless of age or dental hygiene I needed someone to pick up that journal, read what was inside, and offer a part of themselves in return.
The second book was left in a shopping center I used to wander around on long lonely days. I always passed an old woman sitting and reading on a dark green couch. She was always alone. No wedding ring. Slim figure. I often smiled and waved at her, but she never reacted. In my imagination she would find the journal, read it, and weep gratefully for an anonymous hand tapping her shoulder in friendship.
I can’t remember now where the third book is. Probably on a sidewalk, shining up at passersby who took the time to notice a bright red surprise under their feet.
After dropping off a journal I would shake in delight. The jittery feeling of a first date would take control of my arms and legs, leaving me weak and smiling. I would go home that night with a grin on my face, dreaming of that phonecall that would come in most likely just a few weeks timing, offering to take me to dinner and talk about why I left the journal. Offering to talk about their favorite entries, the one that made them cry, the one that seemed like it was written just for them, the one that sounds so familiar they are sure they know who wrote it.
Three times it would happen, because there were three different journals. I would get three phone calls from numbers not recognized and I would pick them up right away, knowing they were from an unmet friend. They would be old or young or crippled or perfect or wise or naïve. They would be lonely and looking, just like me. They would hug me when we meet, tears in their eyes. We would talk for hours about the freedom we felt in writing to no one in particular while feeling a strange bond and togetherness.
Walking down the street I would see people and swear they had written in it. Did the waitress have it now? Did that old man? Did a teenage girl write a story about how she peed her pants at a high school dance? Did a father of four write about how much he regrets that tattoo? Did my friend find it and write about the heartache of miscarrying her first child? Will I get the chance to respond? Will they find me and hold me and let me tell a story of my own?
I spent two months waiting for that phone call. Each day I stared into the faces of strangers and looked for a secret smile, an undiscovered inside joke. A meeting for the imbalanced, a shop with lonely customers, a common street. No one reached back.
I don’t write music anymore. I don’t like the ideas it gives me.