A tree was cut, a mix was made ,and holes were applied, and the I was born. I was very young when I was taken first to the basement, where everything was dark. But soon enough I was brought to the light to fill my purpose, being bought.

At first I thought it would be easy, everyone needs us, even if it's just to play some stupid word puzzle games. But I didn't know people actually take into account what comes in our covers, it was outrageous, how having an image of Barbie, which was the vivid image of the patriarchal paradigm, could make them buy so urgently. But I kept my hopes that some person in need for a simple paper-back-black-cover-with-round-sheets notebook would come along and take me. But apparently, people think that having a pink paper will make their writing more interesting, how naive.

After a while of leaving hope for the needed and faith for the desperate, I just sat back and watched how picky could children be with their new notebooks, who's pages would end up as paper planes. How shallow could teenagers be about the new covers where they would lay their heads and sleep in class. But then one day, not even in autumn, a girl came, saw me, and took me.

All I had known was that my purpose was to be bought, and then just used for some silly geography notes, or untidy physics calculations, I was never prepared for what was to happen. The moment I realized I wasn't going into the bag pack, I suspected the first words in me would be "dear diary", how ordinary. But instead I began to feel a story being written, some fancy handwriting, some violent strokes of excitement and pauses to think of a better adjective.

At first I was delighted I wasn't going to be a diary, what a burden would it be to carry the confessions of a silly teenage girl who's life was all about that guy named Josh who looked at her Tuesday in the third period. Instead I was a writing notebook, something which was much more deep, it was not a chronicle of her life, it was her soul portrayed into fantastic stories which took her imagination into me, a simple paper-back-black-cover-with-round-sheets notebook. Was I worthy of such an honor?

So every few nights, she would take me form that secret place in her shelf, carry that fine pen of hers and started writing. Sometimes she wrote what I understood were analogies from her real life put into a short story. Others, she would describe unbelievable worlds filled with symbols of life death and donuts. She would make a three page long list of questions about the whys and hows of the universe. It was just overwhelming, breathtaking, disquieting and ataractic, all at once.

My whole existence had a purpose, I wasn't just pieces of paper held by a metallic spiral, destined to hold the notes of some class given by some guy named Mr. Kepton. I was much more than those notebooks would ever be, I was a canvas for her wild imagination, a clear field for her to fill with mythical monsters and god-sent creatures. I was a writer's secret notebook.


By I'm the penguin