Sunday, October 23, 2005
Index Cards
Anne Lamott keeps index cards to help her remember things. They help her remember her everyday things to do. She says “we have so much to remember these days” that we make lists to help us remember them; she just chooses to make note cards. Lamott says she “carries one with me in my back pocket and when I take my dog for a walk”. She can simply pull it out and remember what she had to get done that day. What important calls she needs to make, what things she needs to buy and mail, or what ideas she has for a short story. Index cards also work well in remember people and events. She says that she has Demi Moore scribbled on one because those words captured her. Lamott writes down anything “strange or for any reason worth remembering”. She says that her cards are not well organized; they usually just stack up on her desk. But they help her in her writing career because her record things she saw or heard that she wants to keep with her. Lamott’s cards are a way for her to live her life without the stresses of needing to remember everything. She suggests that the reader tries it too, which is very good advice because they have proven to be such a big part of her own life. Lamott says that eventually she throws a lot of her cards away because they do not seem as interesting and often tend to be incoherent. But she says “what lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters, compared to what lies within us”. With her cards Lamott knows that no memory will be lost. In the cards are a piece of her heart and a way that she can scribble down her story.