Rick makes his liv­ing lov­ing ani­mals, and gets to love them from much closer up than do most of us who work for the zoo, the lucky summ­bitch. Not only is Rick funny and kind, but he is also one of the smart peo­ple I have sur­rounded myself with, and whose brains I enjoy suck­ing like a knowl­edge lozenge. I am lucky to call him my friend. In all this, he reminds me a bit of my other friend Rick, who, while not an ani­mal lover by trade, counts as another of my brain can­dies. The Ricks, together with their equally amaz­ing wives could, if all four brains were mixed together, untilt the world. Both Ricks are nat­ural opti­mists, and I love them both for it, but their opti­mism also flum­moxes me more than a bit. Here is some­thing Rick-of-the-Animals wrote recently:

Happy New Year’s Eve every­one! I see a lot of peo­ple say­ing things about how 2012 was good or bad for them. And most every­one is then fol­low­ing up with some­thing like: “I won­der what 2013 has in store for me.”

Uh… You’re doing it wrong. 2013 is not a book that has been writ­ten that you turn each page to see what hap­pens next. THE PAGES ARE BLANK! You turn those damn pages and write/color/draw YOUR story! It’s NOT what 2013 has in store for you — It’s what YOU have in store for 2013!

I will admit that this is an inspir­ing way of look­ing for­ward to the new year… for some. No doubt it would be ben­e­fi­cial if I could com­pletely adopt this atti­tude, but one thing stands in my way: a fear, lit­er­ally and metaphor­i­cally, of blank note­books. Per­haps “fear” is not the right word. For me, blank note­books are anxiety-provoking. Here is a short out­line of my rela­tion­ship with a new notebook:

1. I love the new note­book, pris­tine and filled with pos­si­bil­ity. I make sure that I have a suit­able writ­ing imple­ment for it: an unchewed pen that writes smoothly and is per­haps an inter­est­ing color. I try to out­line what the note­book will con­tain, or at least what type of infor­ma­tion it will hold. I find it a clean, safe pocket in my bag and carry it every­where, in case of sud­den bursts of inspiration.
2. Weeks pass, the note­book grad­u­ally grays and frays around the edges, and the cover begins to get acci­den­tal fold-wrinkles. It still con­tains no more than my name on the inside cover. It is judg­ing me, I know, every time I dig it out: “Are you sure you want to put that in me? I mean, don’t you want to look back at me and feel a bit of pride?” Despite know­ing that a note­book filled with inanity is bet­ter than a blank one, I put it back, unmarked. I won­der if the note­book and I were truly meant to be.
3. After a few months, the first few pages fill up rather sud­denly with a man­i­festo against pro­cras­ti­na­tion, against self-judgement and inac­tion. This is cheer­fully fol­lowed by ran­dom com­mon­places inter­spersed with con­grat­u­la­tory mar­gin­a­lia. The rela­tion­ship has deep­ened, and I am happy.
4. A few weeks of busy-ness and noth­ing is writ­ten. Much as with friends I haven’t con­tacted in ages, I start to think that I am, because of my lapse, no longer wel­come, no longer allowed to reach out. The note­book is removed from the bag and put on a shelf. I tell myself that I will con­tinue it some­day, but I know I never will because I have burnt a bridge, closed a door… failed.

This end­less cycle may be the main drive behind my addic­tion to buy­ing note­books. I am look­ing for the right one. I am afraid of imper­fect note keep­ing. I am afraid of crossings-out, of splotches, of idi­otic jot­tings. I fear these things more than I fear a blank note­book, because at least to me, a blank note­book is far more beau­ti­ful than one ruined. I fear start­ing because I fear stop­ping, or worse, mak­ing a mess of things.

This year, tho, I am writ­ing. I didn’t really mean all this blather as a refu­ta­tion of what Rick wrote. I just wanted to explain that some of us can­not see the joy in blank books, clean slates and the like. Some of us get fright­fully lost in them instead.

I recently found out about a ninth cen­tury med­ical work called Bald’s Leech­book, and it has moved to the top of my “book acqui­si­tion” list, mainly for the fol­low­ing reasons:

1. It is a leech­book. A leech­book. The name itself is rea­son enough to own it.
2. A leech­book is basi­cally a med­ical recipe book. Because of this par­tic­u­lar leechbook’s age, it is no doubt filled with some amaz­ingly inven­tive recipes. As an exam­ple: “For thigh ache, smoke the thighs thor­oughly with fern.” I am not sure what fern smoke does for thighs, but every image I get from read­ing that sen­tence is interesting.
3. It is writ­ten in Old Eng­lish, which gives me a brain stiffy.
4. It deals with med­ical stuff in a very matter-of-fact, and occa­sion­ally eso­teric way, which pleases me greatly.
5. Did I men­tion that it is called a “leechbook”?