Paris Journals #1

It started as any revelation might start
just another day, nothing really
and creation just isn’t stated that way

Often drinking wine does the trick
and miracles might happen like nothing
like natural traps of the imagination

Walking on water, dancing on smoke
farting illusions of better places
making bubbles in your glass of red wine …

(from “Vacuum Dance,” Beer Songs for the Lonely by F.K. Needles)

Paris Journal Intro

In 1998, I bought a Claire Fontaine 17 x 22 cm 40 sheet notebook to take with me to Spain, so that I could keep a journal, and not have a cumbersome pad or computer to carry around. I wanted something I could slip inside a hand bag and carry with me anywhere I went. I ended up really liking this format, and continued to write in these notebooks for the reminder of my stay in France which ended in late 2004 when I moved back to Austin, Texas. There are 33 of these notebooks, all filled with various writings, rants, poetry, drunken prose, among other stuff. I’d write on my computer as well, then print what I had written, and glue it inside these notebooks, where I made more notations by hand. I also glued photographs of friends and myself, unsent letters, and re-worked many of the poems that eventually ended up in my first published book: Beer Songs for the Lonely.

I called these writings: Daynotes. I will publish excerpts here as: Paris Journals.

I would like to share these, publishing half a dozen to a dozen scanned images taken directly from each notebooks, and letting them tell their own stories. I might add some postcards, letters received or unsent — at the time I often wrote letters that I sealed inside envelopes and never sent out — to these images from my Daynotes. 

Commentaries are welcome.

F.K. Needles, February 2010, Austin, Texas