I have a certain mania for paper. I make notes to myself on scraps of paper, sketches, lists - things to buy, to do, occasions, addresses, I buy notebooks and try to organize myself with them, filling them with scraps, try to order my thoughts so that each thought finds it's related notebook, the notebooks pile up, I have now 5, 6, 7... boxes filled with notebooks and scraps of paper, post it notes, under my desk.
I hope to file them one day, go through them, move the ideas onto the computer where they won't fill the office, sort them into folders, briefcases, map them, notes for plays, books, poems, paid bills, rants...
Some are just the small notebooks, filled with things I should remember to buy next time I'm in Egypt, India, Japan...at first a small notebook for all the countries, later several small notebooks, one for each country. Then there are the coil-bound notebooks, song-cycles, poems, there are the gift notebooks, from people who wanted to encourage me to write, these are largely untouched, expensive hand-embossed Italian leather, I want to write in them as well, but they need a more finished product, they are expensive and so worthy only of the finest, distilled thoughts. There are scraps from sketch pads, watercolor, calligraphy paper, torn pieces of drawings I thought worth preserving, Ideas not completely worked out in final concept, these are stuffed randomly into other notebooks. There are address books, several, I've thought to marry them a few times, edit them to reflect my current realm of acquaintance, letters, old suitcases full of lapsed correspondences, memories, postage stamps and postcards, old photographs, there are the day timers, records of days and years past, how much I earned, spent, there are old passports, birth & baptismal certificates, print-offs from the computer, all piled together, jammed into boxes.
There are lists, shopping lists, movies to see, books to read, plays to attend, places to go, various failed attempts to prioritize my finances, old bills, envelopes, clippings from newspapers and catelogues....
I need a secretary.