Inside My Turquoise Notebook

I recently finished this Field Notes Turquoise Tribute. Gotta love the patina on that one after five weeks in my pocket. -Adam

Usually, there’s more variety in the notebook, but most of this one is filled with quotes from Sarah Bakewell’s excellent book on the existentialists, At the Existentialist Café. Here are two passages:

“Even the slightest thing contains a little that is unknown. We must find it. To describe a blazing fire or a tree on a plain, we must remain before that fire or that tree until they no longer resemble for us any other tree or any other fire.” —Flaubert

“Focus on an image until you feel a swelling like a bubble, also a sort of direction indicated to you.”This is your idea; afterward, you can clarify it and write it down.” —Bakewell paraphrasing Sartre

After a vision exam, I kept doodling my right eye. Here they are—along with a couple of stickers.

I list Books to Read on the second-to-last page of my notebooks. I would love to read them but the purpose of the list is to scratch the itch, so I don’t buy every book that sounds interesting. Here’s the existentialism-heavy list from this notebook, with two contemporary novels at the end:

• de Beauvoir

  • The Ethics of Ambiguity

  • Memoirs (4 vols)

  • The Second Sex

• Phenomenology of Perception by Merleau-Ponty

• Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

• Code Noir by Canisia Lubrin

Episode 223

This episode, Ted once again says "Rode hard put away wet types." (Inadvertent call back to episode one.) We discuss old people names, when weird works, and whether we should be taking notes while we read.