Scratch pads usually come in handy for math problems. Carry the one, and do the long division, if you remember how to do that {remainders? Does anyone really remember how to do remainders?}.
But for me, the more enticing scratch pads are the ones like this, the ones where I'm scratching out my thoughts, circling around an idea, crossing out what isn't right.
In a world of computers and the delete button, there is something almost Luddite and anachronistic about writing down—with ink and all—your thoughts. About boldly declaring: this is what I think.
And then boldly scratching it out: This is not what I meant. Let me try that again.
On a computer, you can just hit that delete button and no one ever has to know. Ink bleeds with honesty, and you have to scratch hard and deep to cover up what you didn't mean to say.
This is my draft for my poem "carnival," and perhaps the scratchings and the sections written in different parts of the paper say something about my thought process or my writing process. I don't know, but I look at this and say: here is what I meant to say. All of it, the scratchings and the parts that ended up in the poem, all of it I meant to say to get what was in my head out onto something more permanent and real. To get it out in ink.
Overnight, the town became more carefree.
The bank still stood, imposing and columned on the corner.
Suits and high heels still marched in precision step to the train.
But
Just off Main Street, a carnival had appeared overnight.
All of it: the Tilt-a-Whirl and the kiddie roller coaster
and the Ferris wheel and most importantly,
the funnel cake stand.
Rome wasn't built in a day,
but this carnival was built in eight hours,
which leaves you wondering how well the screws are tightened.
No matter.
This is no time to think about Rome or loose screws—
the carnival is in town,
crammed into the parking lot across from the grocery store,
glowing:
a beacon, a Pied Piper,
an old boyfriend you can't forget.
Late into the night, music plays,
carried down quiet streets by the year's
first hint of humidity.
People sitting in their living rooms,
windows open,
hear children
laughing,
shouting and screaming on the Tilt-a-Whirl
and they think:
Tomorrow, we won't worry about dinner.
We'll go to the carnival and have a hot dog,
maybe even a chili dog if the mood strikes,
and some French fries, too.
And if we can get up the courage,
we'll go on that thing,
that ride that drops you 100 feet in a nanosecond,
a freefall, you're weightless, you've beat gravity.
Just before we drop,
we'll look at our town
see it as the birds see it
and realize
that even the familiar
looks like something to celebrate
when you're in the carnival's glow.
