So Much Depends on an Upside-Down Cinnamon Raisin Bagel

“Wait a second, wait a second. ‘Fax me some halibut.’ Is that funny? Is that a joke?”

-Jerry Seinfeld

While flipping through an old journal the other day, I came across these words: “Upside-down cinnamon raisin bagel.” 

Aside from bearing a charming resemblance to some long-lost William Carlos Williams poem, this notation is essentially useless.

I have no idea what it means, or what it was supposed to remind me to do, or write, or be.

Like many writers, I take copious life notes, and like many writers, my handwriting is atrocious. Which makes Mystery Notations a perpetual bugbear.

What am I supposed to do with such autogenerated nonsense?

There’s a Seinfeld episode for that, of course.

Second season, eighth episode: Jerry falls asleep while watching a sci-fi flick, only to awaken in the night with a fantastic idea for a stand-up comedy bit. He scribbles it down onto a bedside notepad, giggles, then falls back asleep.

By morning, poof! The note is illegible, and the idea is long gone. Jerry spends the rest of the episode soliciting his friends’ help in deciphering the scribble.

True to type, they aren’t much help at all.

“Don’t-mess-with-Johnny,” guesses Elaine.

“Salami, salami, bologna,” declares a nurse.

Antics ensue, and at minute 27 or so, Jerry finally deciphers his Mystery Notation; it is nothing more than a cheesy line from the movie he was watching.

“Flaming globes of Sigmond! That’s not funny,” he moans. “There’s nothing funny about that!”

I agree. I confront my own Mystery Notations on the regular, and they aren’t funny at all. They are enigmatically, insufferably annoying.

Another recent mystery scrawl in one of my journals reads: “Who’s your friend, Claudia?”

I do not know anyone named Claudia, and I do not know why I’d care about a friend of someone called Claudia. Ugh.

Memory is a mysterious and imperfect implement, yet it’s the only implement we’ve got. So what does one do with indecipherable or half-remembered creative revelations?

We could circumvent the night-time ones, at least, by rousing ourselves fully to capture them, but what if we’re tired?

What if we’re driving, or deep in conversation, or meditating, or trying to give our undivided intelligence to some other matter entirely?

My rule: if you can get it down on paper or screen without crashing your car, tanking that night’s sleep, or blowing off people who care about you, go for it!

If you can’t, suck it up and release these flighty inspirations to their natural fates — if we still remember them when we are better positioned to capture them, great.

 If not, as Jerry’s dilemma illustrates, perhaps they were never worth remembering at all.