Assignment One: Wally's Day

Wally, this is the account of how you came to be mine. Please forgive me for not writing this within your pages, however I promise to seat you beside my computer screen so that you may read the story of my finding you on your own. Fan out those empty pages of yours and put your binding to rest. Breathe, relax, and read away, oh notebook of mine.



There we went into a crowded yellow U-bahn train, zipping two stops into the city, waiting anxiously to do our shopping. Four students: two girls, two guys, one me, exited when the train stopped at those ice-blue shiny bricks, exclaiming “here we are!” excitedly to all of Alexanderplatz. I need a towel, postcards, and a notebook, I thought as the rushed Monday traffic of bodies bristled around me. I found myself in a whirling upward twist of what I only know as a metropolitan area: women and their shopping bags, men coming home from work, wives on their errands, what I choose to imagine as husbands standing in line at the flower stand, and tourists like myself caught up in it all.

We found our postcards. One was of a location we knew was very close by, so we donated our Euro to academics and went off, following the gold and blue-green tip of the gothic church to the location where we might capture what the photograph didn’t.

“I’ve finally realized why people walk so slow in San Francisco!” I said to Michael, silently walking slower than I, which I still can’t fathom: I felt as if the soles of my shoes were rolling off the ground at Grandpa speed. “In a new city, I just want to take everything in, I can’t possibly walk my regular pace and do that!” He agreed, but I don’t believe he knew what I was talking about.

The corner was rounded to the live image of the photograph resting in my hand: an intimidating monster with three towers all topped with these blue-green domes that made me want to swim within their sea-like stain. Accented with gold charms and crosses, this church and the fountain before it called strongly for the classic cartoon “ahhhh!” operatic exclamation. There it was in two images: 2D and 3D. One had noise and people and livelihood and movement. The other did not. One gave me interesting people and a young women posing like a model for her boyfriend to capture, earning a European kiss. Children rushed to the fountain. The breeze mocked my decision of attire. And I wrote.

We left soon after to find the department store: towels were our next mission. It was getting late. My phone read eight. I couldn’t accept their request to wait, but on the way, a bookstore was spotted by one of our clever eyes. This is something I didn’t even think to realize in another country: books in different languages! It sounds silly, but when I think of a different language, the impression of pages filled with foreign words, an array of familiar and unknown letters filling a page, making perfect sense to the woman before it but not to the girl glancing over her shoulder interests me fantastically. We jaunted into the shop, our feet moving quickly as to take us there with more speed and intention.

Fingering over binding after binding, dipping my fingertip into the tops of books as to pull them out, I found notebooks. Horrah! I called the other students over: notebooks have been found! Red binding, black binding. Large or small. Lines? No lines? And there you were, little thing, your skinny TUSHITA label and your curiously attractive color: a sepia veneer. I know it when I see it. Ich liebe dich so wie ich bin. You smiled at me. I smiled at you. Your English translation as I flipped you over to your front side, showing the exact silly Einstein photograph as the back, showed me that we’re meant for each other.

I love you just like I am.

And so it began, my good friend, a conversation of one who speaks and one who listens—something I have come to despise in people however adore in bound blank pages. I have named you, I have put you to use. I vow to care for you. Little Wally, I do love you just like I am. This is the beginning of something spectacular.