A World of Pure Imagination

As a matter of routine, the muppets and I ventured forth to Target last night. We had a list of items we needed on our errands. We meandered down the office aisles to pick up some CDs so we can share the latest brilliant Keary Dee captured images of our family with the muppets’ adoring masses.

I looked down and saw a Mickey Mouse themed hardcover notebook calling to me from the impulse buy aisle end.

Search reached for it from the front of the stroller. I picked it up.

I put it back down – I, in no way, need another notebook. Our library shelves are filled with at least 12 empty to half-filled notebooks.

I picked it back up – all those other notebooks are 5×8. This one is a full-sized 8.5×11…and college ruled!

I flipped through the pages. Each empty line begged to be filled with a new adventure. Each blank sheet held the opportunity for a thousand adventures yet to be discovered. That white space is where Harry Potter lived before he was initiated into the wizarding world. It’s where Mr. Rochester kept house with his mentally ill wife. Shakespeare’s Hermia chafed under the controlling fist of her father. Edmund Dantes dreamed of a happy homecoming and his pending nuptials – horrors of Chateau D’If and plots of revenge pages from his mind…

The dusty smell of aging paper mixing with synthetic ink is completely intoxicating. The library is where I am suddenly a kid in a candy store. The blank notebook is a 150-page opportunity to be a Golden Ticket holder in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. It’s a world of pure imagination contained in standard letter size.

Not many people still write their stories longhand anymore. I certainly don’t. I’ve embraced the digital age (see this blog for proof). Word processing software allows me to write in a stream-of-conscious fashion, ideas spewing from my fingers as fast as I can think. But that notebook held endless possibilities. It was a visual representation of my stories – all the creative ideas and their potential.

During the day, thoughts and phrases swirl through my mind. That book I’ve mentioned, chapter concepts, themes, sentences and individual words, constantly run through my overactive imagination. That notebook, those pages, each individual college-ruled line, is a portal to another universe of intrigue and adventure.

I bought the notebook.

“Once upon a time there was a little boy who couldn’t sleep…” I could see my story filling those pages. I booted up my laptop. That book is in progress. It’s the story of my once upon a time. Mickey is sitting on my desk; Destroy chewed on him a bit.

Even in a digital world, the greatest source of motivation is an old-fashioned pen and paper. Tonight, holding an empty notebook with no idea of what will eventually fill its enticing pages, I am a writer. I am a storyteller – if only in the world of my imagination.

Come with me and you’ll be
In a world of pure imagination
Take a look and you’ll see
Into your imagination

We’ll begin with a spin
Trav’ling in the world of my creation
What we’ll see will defy
Explanation

If you want to view paradise
Simply look around and view it
Anything you want to, do it
Want to change the world, there’s nothing to it

There is no life I know
To compare with pure imagination
Living there, you’ll be free
If you truly wish to be

If you want to view paradise
Simply look around and view it
Anything you want to, do it
Want to change the world, there’s nothing to it

There is no life I know
To compare with pure imagination
Living there, you’ll be free
If you truly wish to be

– Pure Imagination, Don Ward