see private, Jon-unfinished. Call me Kafka.

my favorite new friend Jon suggested that facebook messages aren't much different than email, as far as privacy goes. i told him that facebook felt like a private conversation in a crowded bar, while email was more like...ooh, i can't remember what i said, as it was more than twelve hours ago, so how about more like sitting on the ground with just one person, in a forest preserve in the middle of a weekday before school's out? 
actually, the government creeps on us on fb and myspace, now. while what i do these days probably holds about the same amount of interest for The Man as does your average X-File...
yeah, no, social networking sites just don't feel the same, dearheart.

a few years ago, or maybe fifteen years ago, my sister was explaining to one of her friends who didn't know me that i was late meeting her because i had to stop and buy a notebook.
why, he asked, does she need a notebook if you're meeting her at a restaurant? can't she just write on a napkin?
my sister laughed (the way some ladies do).
no. i could write on a napkin, and so could you. she probably even HAS a notebook. it isn't the right one, though.
some things can be written on napkins, because that is why the napkin existed in the first place. poetry can rarely be written in anything besides a poetry notebook. (they're smaller than the ones for freewriting, prose, prosepoems, and accidental letters.)
professional writing and (shudder) anything resembling academic writing don't need to be written. typing uses a different part of your brain. mine, anyway. i can't speak for your brain.
blogs are nearly as quiet as email. it's the save as draft option. better than word processing for some things. microsoft word has always made me feel like i'm talking to myself.
the color of the notebook is a factor, as is its history. the green notebook i had people put their phone numbers into on st. patrick's day told me to buy it the sunday before when i went to walgreen's on break from work. it stared at me. i said i didn't need another notebook, that i don't use or even carry the ones i have.
the office supply aisle asked me why, then, it was so damned important that i have those old-school purple flexgrips tucked within reach everywhere except my desk at work.
(this is not a superstition, nothing like my refusal to bring my tarot cards to the little "Catholic" campus that's known as the most haunted place in illinois. it's simply impractical to risk the wandering off of pens that cost twenty bucks a box and take six weeks to ship. and, of course, i would never write anything work-related with a purple flexgrip. they're far too personal. i might wear one of my Baby Firefly mugshot t-shirts under one of my aunt's sweaters, but my very favorite pair of underwear are reserved for days off. usually vacations days or snow days, in fact. ah. i digress, even in what began as a facebook message.)
what goes on in that poetry notebook is between me and the woodman's parking lot; let anyone else who wonders why i spend so much time in a grocery store after midnight be damned. i tried to look away from all that white space. blank pages, new drawing pads, the fresh white expanse of canvases--these things get me where i live. fresh paint on a wall calls to me. i get lost in these places that wait for negative space. the back of the garage door is spared only by the variations in the shadows of the too-symmetrical rectangular grooves. the back of the garage door is redeemed by smudges of sticky dirt, dried wood glue and greasy fingermarks. i revel in these. the undoing of man's watery attempt at order, God and Nature and the proof of the existence of South Dakota Diamond Willow all triumphing over concrete in this cluttered little Midwestern garage. 
back at walgreens, the green one looked at me again.
i don't want another notebook that i won't fill up. i don't even try to fill up the ones i already have, not anymore. it stings a little to think of that last yellow one. (sometime i'll tell you about the red notebook--that's a story i've already told, so it isn't a secret, not like this.)
the pens and pencils smirked at me. especially the pencils. then why don't you need any more of us, they asked in a taunting tone. (there's that awful alliteration addiction again.)
for reasons i can neither explain here nor in an incredibly private message, not now, maybe not even later, the pencils jabbed lower and sharper than i consider fair. i squeezed Boo, who had not yet mentioned that he was named Boo, and was not yet legally my new purse dog. fortunately, Boo was made by Ty, not by other dogs, and he was unharmed.
it had to be a green notebook. the sunday before st. patricks day, just to annoy me even more.
my obstinacy only goes so far when i'm alone, though, and the walgreens by work is about as close to alone as i get on work nights, at least when my building is still open.