Gabrielle’s Magical Notebook

Part One
Part Two

I am on grass that is greener than the word has power to hold. It is a color that one can only see in dreams and even then only just enough to make you long for it always. All around me are trees full of some kind of fruit that is probably ripe and tasty and wonderful. On my left is a fast-flowing river full of water so black it resembles ink. Actually, it probably is ink and I would know for sure if I stopped to examine it, but I am running and I can not stop. I dropped something in that river of ink and I must get it back. I need it; I must have it; I can’t be me without it. So I am running faster than my feet can carry me, ducking around trees whose limbs reach for me. The fruit hanging from them knock against my head, but I do not stop.

Frantic, I begin grabbing apples and throwing them away when they are not mine. I am still yelling, screaming out my anger, my loss. I am throwing apple after apple out of the frozen river, but it makes no difference. For ever apple I throw another is added. But I can not stop. I have lost my treasure, my heart and joy, myself. I must have it back; I need it.

Adam woke up tired and sore. He felt as though he’d been hit repeatedly during the night or maybe like he’d slept on a pile of lumpy rocks. His body was tired and his mind didn’t want to face the day. But a glance at the clock told he would very soon be running late so he forced himself into a sitting position and heaved himself out of bed.

A shower made him wet and then a towel made him dry. Neither the process nor the water did anything towards helping him feel awake or more energetic. He ate something and dragged himself out of the apartment.

It was the beginning of his second week on the job. He was now a full-fledged janitor. He had a card key to get around the building, he had a pair of coveralls, he had a mop he preferred, he had a locker. If there was a lower position in the building than new janitor Adam was sure there were laws against it being filled by a sentient creature.

Adam managed to get into work just before he was late as usual. He hated pushing himself to get in on time or, heaven forbid, early. It seemed to acknowledge how important having this job was. It highlighted that this job wasn’t just a stepping stone from where he was on up to where he wanted to be; it was all he had. If he lost this job then he would probably find himself very hungry with an eviction notice. But even knowing that this job was putting food into his cupboards hadn’t meant he’d had to have any more respect for his it. It just meant he made sure he wasn’t late.

Adam changed into his coveralls, his name neatly printed on the left-hand side of his chest. He opened his locker to stow his satchel inside only to realize that he hadn’t brought it again. It was still on his table where he’d dumped the day after he’d gotten this job. A feeling of loss threatened to creep up on him, but he’d gone two weeks without that stupid bag, book and pen so he could go another day. He slammed his locker, grabbed his cart and started his rounds.

It was a new experience for Adam to be invisible. He was used to not being noticed in a crowd, used to being overlooked, but he’d never been fully and completely invisible. People will stop their private conversation for someone who’s easy to overlook. One might accidentally make eye-contact with someone who’s hard to get to know. It is even possible that somewhere there is a person who would hold an elevator for a stranger. But nobody notices a janitor.

As he went around the building emptying garbage, cleaning the bathrooms, mopping or sweeping it was as if he didn’t exist anymore. Several times a day Adam would walk into the middle of some private gossip fest in the hall. Heads bent together, voices hushed, eyes constantly checking to see who was coming that shouldn’t hear this juicy new news. The huddled people would break off when others walked past and start up again as soon as they were out of earshot. But no one stopped talking when Adam walked past. It was as if his bucket, his coveralls and the feeling of shame that surrounded him worked together to make him completely invisible. By the end of his first week he knew more about the lives of the people who worked for the newspaper than he’d ever wanted to.

Adam found himself talking about it to Jameson. Imagine his shock on his first day to find out that his park side therapist was also his new boss. Adam had gaped at him, moving his mouth wordlessly like a fish out of water while Jameson just calmly explained his duties around the building. The only admission he’d made to their first meeting was asking him on his first day where “that fancy bag with your paper and pen” was. Adam had replied tensely that he’d left them home. Jameson had nodded thoughtfully and nothing more was said of it.

Now he was nodding again as Adam ranted about the other employees of the newspaper.

“I mean, just because I don’t wear a suit and tie doesn’t mean I don’t work here, too!”

They were sitting in the basement eating lunch together. Sometimes Adam felt that he was beginning to live his whole life is basements. He’d had been a janitor for a month and eaten lunch with Jameson almost every day of that month. He hadn’t a few times and found that he missed the company more than he wanted to admit. With no reason to write Adam was struggling with thoughts and ideas coming into his mind with no way to express them. He ended up dealing with it by talking far too much to Jameson. Adam couldn’t remember the last time he’d talked this much to anyone. He was just aware enough to realize that Jameson never got much of a chance to say anything in these conversations and that he knew next to nothing about his fellow janitor. Of course, the old man never made much of an effort to talk so Adam hoped he didn’t mind very much.

Like now, for instance, Jameson had almost finished his lunch and Adam had barely taken a bite. He’d been too busy talking about the most recent slight on his person.

“I don’t expect much from them, you know, but, I mean, really, I’m still a human being even though I don’t work at a desk.” The sandwich was almost to his mouth before he jerked it away again. “It’s not as if just because our break room is in the basement that we shouldn’t be treated like people. We’re still humans, y’know? It shouldn’t matter if we where coveralls or not.”

Jameson got up from the rickety table they were sitting at, stepped over to the coffee pot, poured himself a cup of coffee. He added some milk and stirred it, all in slow, deliberate movements. Adam watched him closely, hoping for some reaction to what he’d been saying, but not expecting one. His eyes followed Jameson as he stepped back to the table and settled himself back in his chair. For lack of anything else to do in the silence Adam took a bite of his sandwich.

Jameson blew on his coffee and took a sip. He rolled the sip around his mouth, swallowed it and blew on his coffee some more. Adam found he’d bolted most of his lunch while the other man had prepared his coffee. At times like these Adam had discovered he had more patience than he’d suspected before meeting Jameson. Jameson cleared his throat, but when he spoke, without looking up, all he said was, “You leave your pen at home again today?”

His words followed Adam around the rest of that day. All of the thoughts he’d used to put on a page with his leaky pen pushed against the boundaries of his mind. He watched the politics of the small-city newspaper, the unspoken rules, the behavior of people when they assumed they were alone. And always the thought of a leaky pen and a notebook in an old leather satchel rose to the fore.

Adam finished his shift, punched out and went home. A shower washed most of the smell of honest labor from him. He wrapped himself in a towel and went to the kitchen to make some dinner. As he assembled the makings of spaghetti he kept passing the table where his satchel lay. He put a pot of water on the stove to boil. He stared at the satchel. He opened a jar of sauce, emptied it into a sauce pan, put it on the stove to heat up. He stared at the satchel again.

Images and sounds played through his mind. A road of clouds that had turned to vapor. A swirl of snowflakes that managed to dance together while still each being special, unique. A grove of apples knocking against his head as he ran. Always these thoughts came back to a pen that was probably oozing ink and a notebook that had seen better days.

How did it all come down to this, Adam wondered. For a moment he fought with himself. He held back from picking up the satchel, from sitting down to commit his thoughts to paper. Always before he had written for his dream. Always before each word had been a small step on the road to a job as a journalist writing down wisdom for the masses. That dream was gone now. If he picked up that pen again what would each word be worth? What would be the value in stringing together thoughts and sentences?

Well, he asked himself in a voice that sounded like someone else’s, what would be the value in not?

Decision made, Adam sat down at the table and pulled his satchel towards himself. He pulled from it a battered notebook and a pen that always leaked. Immediately he stained his hand in the same old spot. Adam realized that the ink had all worn off his hand in the weeks since he’d last held this pen. He’d never realized how much he’d missed it. And there, at a small table in a basement apartment, Adam began to write. He wrote until his water boiled and his sauce splattered little red drops all over his stove. He paused to turn them both off and went back to writing.

The next day Adam got out of bed and went to work. He punched in right on time and went to his locker to hang his stuff up. Jameson wandered over to him and watched him hang up his jacket and satchel.

“What’s in the bag?” the old man asked mildly.

Adam suddenly felt shy before this man he had said more to than anyone else.

“Just my paper and pen,” he said.

Jameson studied his face all traces of vagueness gone from his eyes. They were once again like spotlights. “You know,” he said, “there aren’t any Pulitzers down here.”

“Yeah, I know,” Adam said. “But, well, maybe no one’s thought to listen to what a janitor has to say before.”

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I’ve heard it said that we are not hypocrites in our dreams. That instead we use our dreams to reach further than we would ever think to try. We reach up high and maybe we miss the stars, but in the reaching we find our arms are longer than we’d thought. Our single bounds rarely carry us over any buildings, but in the leaping we often find an entire world we’d have never imagined just above our heads.