Foolscap Unlined : The Addendum Project

This is not 8-1/2 x13 lined paper.  It is special paper.

  Foolscap.  You get the idea. In this photo it's short, but  it's blank.  You can still doodle between the lines on it.
 Or make lists..long lists.....of your valuable junk bits collections. Well, okay, it would be a short list on this sheet.

It might be cut short, but it's Genuine  Foolscap.

In times past, civilization and society itself was expressed on foolscap with lines.....the symbol of order. Remember?

 <-------Blank Foolscap





 

Crooked lawyers practicing evil lawyer's tricks with invisible ink made from lemon juice used foolscap. Students writing examinations trying to remember what the  crib sheet up the sleeve teacher said used foolscap.  Blank foolscap, white,  8-1/2x13" and lined with pale blue lines was the real deal.   Maybe you  compromised the sanctity practiced by foolscap  purists and cheated with one of those yellow utility pads.  Wannabe foolscap,  something like foolscap but not the same.

Addendum: Lists

Lists:  Handy things for recording erratic handwriting of scribblers,  scared-stiff diddlers students, or organizing junk. Anyone can write them, but few people follow them. Seriously.
 Lists. Do you like making lists? You have to admit, making lists of junk and foolscap go together.

Addendum:  Junk   

Junk.  We have junk. Do you? List it carefully.  And legibly.

Look around you. Remember that stuff when you bought it?  Most of it was  good, usable,  and it was...well...just like new. Now it needs to go on the  list.

Addendum:  Technology Changed on Us   

It may be a surprise, but there were no computer screens in the dark ages, no wired  mice.  There were not even electronic notepads, or smurf-sized  yellow sticky-notes.    We used foolscap. 
Not now. We're modernized.  Our computer screens  are unlined to ensure it is not overly-organized, since it, too, in many ways, is designed to collect scraps and bits and pieces. Line up the icons if you wish, but it's hardly necessary.

Addendum: Broken writing

 Some written pieces really are helpless misfits with broken parts;  those rebellious,  weird pieces and kaflooie  do not fit anywhere.  Genre issues,  unedited procrastination, the flaky rust of the writer's mind. We write those on foolscap.Find a weird, rebellious place to plunk miss-written kabobs and leaky word structures.  Real dust-collectors they are, ruinous contributors to hard drive hoards and yes,file-filler-uppers.

 Addendum:  What to do with it all

Everybody has some,  -- big cardboard boxes full of boxes, stuffed closets, heaps of boxes under the stairs,  a stuffed nook,  or that closed, unruly and musty room that no visitor suffers  permission to enter. Don't look under the bed.  Hallways magically get smaller as crap accumulates along the walls  time moves on.
 Again, what to do with it all?   Something like those big boxes of unusable crap stuff in the bottom of the closet, the big one  with the alarm buzzer and  "Danger-do not open Door" sign written in Chinese, -and then there's the high shelf just down the hall. Put a sign on it too. "Danger, falling stuff!" Gravity works regardless of language on the sign. 

Addendum:  More Stuff 

Regardless of shape or content,  'heaps' smell like germs, old paper and acrid old  floor wax.

A veritable  dump bin for beloved  antique table legs and other assorted projected wood bits,  antique parts, arrow-straight solid oak expander-boards for tables long gone,   or bags of woolen winter clothing, sleeping bags, old skis,  patches and button-collections.
Maybe you just have  a high shelf reserved for old albums,  faintly-perfumed, ancient love letters  and slightly doggy-eared books too. Everybody needs one of those.  No matter. We 'collect' stuff.  It's in our nature.

Addendum:   Exterior, out and about Stuff

Out in the yard behind the shed  a couple or six old  bicycles dangle, boasting of past treks --and a few extra bike wheels and frames  hang around as spares under the eaves on  plastic-coated hooks driven deeply into the wall.   There's more than one old, rusty tool box out in the garage, on the shelf by the door with the broken hinge. Old chain saw files, and broken but rusty, still  pretty-good drill-bits await sharpening and reconstitution.
Buckets of hammer heads and old axes rust like the adjacent pails of used spikes  and chain pieces until a shiny  new just-right  handle comes along. If ever.  Other incorrigible and unusable tools go into old wood boxes,--things  that are just too good to throw away. We might need them some day. Make something out of them.
Sometimes life's bits and pieces are just too good to discard too, like good old sets if pots and pans inherited from  the mail lady. Just because you pulled her car out of the ditch yet. In the rain. And it pulled the bumper off of your car.
 Add them all, every one,  to the lists of broken paragraphs, mosquito bites, and smart-ass formidables because they're not get-riddables.  




Such is Foolscap Unlined --a place for written bits and pieces. Does stuff  written get to be a collection of rust and dust, too?  What is written dust?  Is it a source of inspiration, a hidden resource for the future?

We'll see.  Will it be mined, or restored to it's former glory?  That's another addendum.

After all, what's an addendum to another addendum that's already got an addendum or four more,  or thirty-seventy gazillion more   attached to it anyway?

Addendum:  Add something?

Would you like to add an addendum?  Anyone that adds an addendum  to the Addendum Project will have byline attribution. Just add it as a comment and if it's a mind-bending addendum  I'll transfer it for you.----Unless you would rather just write it on foolscap and tuck it into a  pile or stuff it into that box in the closet at home.

Is that incoming I hear?