The Unopened Midori

The Unopened Midori

— Matthew D. Lyons

There is a notebook on my shelf
I bought to help me write.

Cream paper.
A5.
Japanese binding.
The kind of paper people describe
with the seriousness once reserved
for wine or scripture.

I know which pens won't bleed through it.
I know how other people use theirs.
I have watched them explain
their systems, their collections,
their commonplace books and second brains,
the careful architecture
of a meaningful life.

I have learned how to take notes like Didion,
how to rebuild an intellectual life,
how to declutter it in six rules,
how to carry only what matters,
how to capture what matters,
how to measure what matters,
how to make sure nothing that matters
escapes uncatalogued.

And still,

the Midori is unopened.

Sometimes I wonder
if I have mistaken preparation
for practice.

If all this learning how to live
has become a particularly elegant way
of postponing my life.

There is always someone on the screen
who seems to have figured it out.

A better morning.
A better notebook.
A better mind.
A better way to read a book
so that the reading will not be wasted.

They speak of ecosystems now,
as though a life were something
whose parts should all communicate,

as though the heart might sync with the calendar,
the body with the watch,
the watch with the phone,
the phone with the cloud,

until nothing is ever lost.

But I am beginning to wonder
about the things worth losing.

An afternoon with no record of it.
A walk whose steps were never counted.
A night of sleep I know was good
because I woke and felt rested.
A question nobody answered
because nobody reached for a phone.

A thought allowed to wander off
without being captured.

Maybe even a little boredom.

that old empty field
where something once had time
to grow.

I wonder, too, what I have been gathering
all this knowledge for.

To live more deeply?

Or to be the man who knows things,
who has read the books,
who can name the poets and practices,
who has accumulated enough beautiful ideas
to become, at last,
interesting?

There is truth in both answers.

I know that now.

But no amount of knowing
can inhabit a life for me.

No one can teach me
the system for noticing
the particular light
falling across this particular room.

No video can tell me
what my own tiredness feels like.

No productivity method can explain
why a certain memory returned this morning
or why someone's voice stayed with me
after they left.

Some things refuse
to become useful.

Thank goodness.

So the notebook waits.

Not accusing me.
Not asking for consistency.
Not tracking the days
I have failed to write.

Just eighty-eight blank sheets
with no opinion whatsoever
about who I should become.

Maybe tomorrow I will open it.

Maybe I will write something profound.

Or maybe only:

It rained this morning.

And for once
I will resist the urge
to make the rain mean anything.

I will let the page be a page,
the rain be rain,

and let this life be

unmeasured,
unfinished,
already happening

be enough to write down
because I was here.