On Everything, On Everything

She took notes on everything, on everything.

He loved her, and the little we know about the whole event suggests an unusual motivation for his love, which was partially in her face and her mind but primarily in her pocket, next to her phone - he loved her because of a green sharpie, and because of what she did with it, what he saw her doing with it when he saw her and loved her: taking notes.

She took notes on everything, on everything, which required clarification from the beginning but which no longer serves our purposes without it, so, to explicate, she took notes on everything, on everything: on all subjects and surfaces. She took notes on bow ties on an advertisement in the subway; she took notes on how sad people look on a table in McDonald’s; she took notes on cars on cars. She was unlimited in her note taking, and so he loved her when he was walking down the street and she was on the opposite sidewalk, pressed up against the glass of Daisy's Dresses and Things, one hand curled lazily up against her hip and the other clutching her sharpie and writing on the glass and then turning around without examining her work because she was practiced at this; she knew she was right; there was nothing to examine. He stared, and she looked at him because to take good notes she needed to see everything, to take note of everything, and so she did not look in his eyes she looked at his eyes and then she looked both ways and crossed the street and looked back at his eyes but this time she was in front of him, in note taking range, and she squinted with effort and stood on the tips of her toes and wrote on his face in green sharpie and then walked away and he was left looking across the street at the store window of Daisy's Dresses and Things which had two notes now, except one of the notes was backwards because it was written on his face.

Sharpie, for our intents and purposes infinitely less permanent than promised, washed off his face after two days and two nights and two showers and he never saw her again, but sharpie, for his intents and purposes as permanent as the writing on the window of Daisy's Dresses and Things ("this store used to sell chocolate") which remained, permanently, remained, permanently, not in his face or his mind or his personality but in his pocket, next to his cell phone and wallet. His sharpie was red and his notes were far more limited than hers, for he took notes on everything but not on everything, which is of course to say that he took notes on all surfaces but not on all subjects; he had only one subject – three little words – which seems unsatisfying but was actually not.

And so he took notes on everything but on only one thing, and since there was not much to say on only thing it ended up that all of his notes were the same: "I love you," written on walls and ceilings and floors and windows and public telephones, to which her green sharpie reply, as constant as the note she was replying to, as constant as the many subjects and surfaces she took notes on, as constant as the flowing ink which has served to communicate ideas and feelings for generations before us and will continue to do so for generations after, as constant as everything, as everything, was always scribbled neatly under his note and was always breaking our heart in exactly the same way and always said, from top-to-bottom and left-to-right, "I know".