STORY

The girl who didn't know about all this knew something.  I didn't even know if it was all this that she didn't know about.  It may have been some of this.  It seemed like it was all of it for me because it didn't matter where I went - around the campus or in the neighborhood of the university or downtown to the heart of the city, it seemed like it was the same questions about life and what was going to happen with it and whether the way I felt about people was full of love or full of something else.  But it looked like she didn't know about all this because she had a notebook in front of her, and she had it in front of her sitting on a step in the city square, which made it seem like she didn't even know about a table and chair for certain, and all she did know was whatever had made her stop right there and open her notebook, and I wanted to go to her and tell her that I knew exactly how she felt - that the only thing I knew for certain was what made me stop and open a notebook, and I didn't have mine with me because, truth be told, I was trying to get to know a notebook in the context of a table and chair, because the steps in the city square were nice for a spring day like this, but I was trying to get to know a notebook in a way that would carry me through life, and some days it was going to be too cold for that.
     
But there was something that kept me from it.  It was so solitary a thing for me that I felt it must be so solitary a thing for her, and I loved her solitude so much that even I couldn't be the one to appreciate it by breaking it.  Even as I felt sure that there was no one in the world who could break her solitude and still appreciate it as much as I could, still I couldn't do it, because a thing was broken whether it was broken gently or not, and I needed her solitude just then, just for the chance that what she was writing was coming out of the fact that she didn't know about all this, that her not knowing about all this was a girl's not knowing about all this the way that mine was a boy's not knowing about all this, not knowing about human beings most of all, about their movement and action and what it all added up to, about their creations and accomplishments and how we were supposed to feel about that, and about their misery and patheticness and how we were supposed to care about their creations and accomplishments when we looked at that.
    
 Somehow a single girl writing in her notebook was the one thing that could make some sense of all that, and I almost wished that I didn't care about notebooks so much, her's or my own or anybody's, and I could focus on the prettiness of her knees below her dress instead, but the prettiness of her knees just made me think of how much I cared about notebooks again, my own and her's and everybody's, because whatever it was that I was looking for, it had to do with everybody, it had to do with what everybody was going to do about everybody, and I knew that the prettiness of her knees was connected to that, but it was too complicated for me, and it was easier for me to see the connection with a notebook, because the way that it started from one place and went everywhere was clear - a nice clean smooth paper that was practically meant to go from one place to everywhere, partly because everywhere had gone into it, and it was reflecting it back, in a way that was slow and a person could take their time and understand.  There was a selflessness in that kind of reflecting, and I didn't know then how she and I could sit and be selfless together.  The only way I figured we could was if we sat down and asked to see what each other was writing instead of talked ourselves.  There was something that I felt like we could get to like that that we couldn't get to by talking.
    
This was all back before I knew that everybody was a writer, whether they wrote or not.  There was something they were all doing that somehow was the same as what a writer did.  A girl with an open notebook was a still a beautiful thing to see after that, but so was a girl without one.  It was possible to sit and be selfless together with her too, because the world was filling her up with something that deserved to go on a piece of paper and then out to everywhere from her, and in the same way that a girl looked most beautiful when she didn't know about all this, so a woman looked most beautiful when she knew about all this, enough to live at least, to smile when it was time for smiling and to cry when it was time for crying, all of which was enough for today.  It was today that had me most confused and uncertain when I saw the girl with an open notebook, and one thing I felt confused and uncertain about was whether I should see her as the end of confusion and uncertainty.  That was one thing I liked about the notebook, was that it looked like she was trying, and I was beginning to understand that there was no end, there was only trying together, and some great things could be achieved by the end of the night that wouldn't mean there wouldn't be a starting over again the next morning.  And after a while, I didn't need the outward symbols like notebooks to know that a woman was trying.  My own trying was too wrapped up in the belief that she was trying to see anything else.  A notebook happened to be the symbol that applied to me and my trying, but what looked most beautiful now was the look that came after writing - a look of knowing - of coming from a beautiful story that had some form to it, and I didn't have to read the whole thing right away, because I was coming from my own, and I didn't have to see her's as the end of something for me.  I could see it as the beginning of something, which it was, and I could look back and remember the girl who didn't know about all this and tell her that I wanted to talk with her that day, but I didn't know about all this either, and I didn't know about two people who didn't know about all this coming together.  I knew that there would be beauty to it, but I was scared, because I didn't know if we would be building up each other's not knowing about this by coming together, or if we would start to know something, and most likely it would have been some of both, but I just felt like I knew absolutely nothing that day, and the sight of her writing in her notebook was something I could hold in my hand, as unconfused and certain as anything I'd seen that day, and I guess my hands felt so empty that it was hours, days, months, and years before I thought that I should have said something.