I used to take very organized notes with bullet points, etc., but then I realized that’s just not me. I need to excavate my notes, to go in with a shovel and a lantern and to rope off a tiny square of the page and brush the sand from the note gently, lay its words side by side like a great skeleton and play archeologist to my own learning. If it’s too clear, it bores me. I also like the serendipitous associations I make when thoughts butt up against one another on the page, which is appropriately the color of earth. On the notebook’s cover there are hundreds of birds like crows standing on the spires of all the cathedrals I’ve drawn.