I’m not a compulsive list-maker by any stretch, but sometimes, if I have a new pad of paper, a new ink cartridge in the fountain pen I use maybe three times a year, and nothing else to do (in other words, my Wireless connection is acting up) I’ll start a list such as that begun on June 24, 2012. Entitled, “Things We Really Need To Do Around Here,” it has been ignored for nine months. Thirteen of fourteen things still need to be done, not the least of which is “Hang pictures & get rid of ones we HATE.” The only thing done that resulted in any demonstrable changes was “Call the Mike the Painter.”

On July 1st, I began another list. I wrote it down with To Do at the top and next to each item, I added an empty check box:

• Call Southwest Diagnostic re: bill
• Cancel newspaper until 7/21
• Fwd Mail
• Find someplace for Atticus!!!!
• Beck – Looking for a Sign
• Tom Waits – The Heart of Saturday Night
• Ask mam – did granda tell her about The Battle of the Somme??
• Poppies

Well-intentioned and clearly focused on an upcoming vacation that necessitated sending Atticus to kitty jail, I was off to a good start.  I’m guessing Beck must have popped up on Pandora, sending me and my list off on a tangent that ended with remembering my grandfather who fought in World War I. Nonetheless, we went on vacation, the cat lives, my playlists include more Beck and Tom Waits, and I have written about my grandfather and his experiences as a young soldier lest any of us forget.

While I don’t make daily to-do lists, I am rarely without post-it notes in my handbag, or one of those little notepads reporters used to carry around in their back pockets. This is not entirely about being ready to jot down things of a pedestrian nature, although that has happened – I’ll quickly scribble some new medical term I need to look up on Google, because instead of asking my doctor what she was talking about, I just sat there, nodding sagely. Or I will remember that I need to buy shampoo.  I might hastily write down the name of the store where I can find a handbag like the one hanging from the arm of the complete stranger I met in the post-office, befriending her over our mutual regard for a bag that’s just the right size. Paper and pen at hand is more aspirational, anticipation of some treasure waiting for me in the most unexpected places.

I remember a summer afternoon in 2008 on Brattle Street in Cambridge, MA when I spotted a bright yellow piece of paper stuck to the window of an American Apparel store. On it, something John F. Kennedy had said about immigration, that I have since learned was part of the Legalize LA campaign. No smartphone on hand to take a picture, I captured those achingly relevant words in my little reporter’s notepad, and for good measure added them to my signature on my work email:

Immigration policy should be generous; it should be fair; it should be flexible. With such a policy we can turn to the world and to our own past with clean hands and a clear conscience.

Along with John F. Kennedy’s compassionate words on immigration, I have jotted down reminders,  presumably, to buy water, ice, band aids, and plane tickets to San Diego. Stuck between the plane tickets and the need for band aids, is The Drunkard’s Walk by Leonard Mlodinow. This is the title of a book, and I am now bemused, given the theme that is developing here, by its subtitle: How Randomness Rules our Lives. I wish I could remember who told me about this book and in what context. I probably need to read it.

Randomness continues on the next page with  apples, strawberries, bananas and a toothbrush. I need to call Kathleen, perhaps about a pair of shoes from Sandalworld online, where, as it happens, I will also find Jack Rogers. Realizing eventually that Mr. Rogers is not someone I need to call, but is the name attached to pricy sandals which the website screams, are the summertime staple. There is another quotation: “Culture is a social control system. If you don’t manage it, it can undermine innovation and creativity and hinder your ability to execute your strategy. This is why a leader should care about culture.” Indeed a leader should. I have no idea where I was or who said this, but obviously it was someone who said something I had also been thinking about, except better than I could and at just the right time.

A man of few written words, my husband loves his post-it notes where his abbreviations of grocery items often render them cryptic as ancient hieroglyphics or personalized license plates.Yesterday morning, I spotted on top of a small pitcher of water his note to himself to feed our family of humming birds and water the petunias in the front yard. He added a flourish. “Hum-bird. Water the Front.”

The stories we could weave from our discarded lists and post-it notes – resolutions, reminders, instructions, and bucket lists. Our favorite things. The very worst things, too, the things we fear the most – a message received too late, a fence never mended, undeniable evidence of a loved one’s harrowing descent into memory loss. Intimate. Relatable. Human.

Whatever is posted on those notes stuck to themselves at the bottom of my handbag is unlikely to see the light of day, unlike the array of yellow post-its, lists, and miniature drawings that meander around, above, and on top of a desk belonging to the aunt of a friend:

An artist, she has pressed tightly over the edge an intriguing “Simplicity. Complexity.” I am curious about the story contained in those words but it’s likely to remain elusive, as it does for artist Adriane Herman who for almost a decade rummaged through trashcans and grocery carts, culling evidence of the way we spend our time – or the way we aspire to.

In her review of Herman’s word-based art, Annie Larmon describes this reconstruction of “our most ephemeral and disposable documents as relevant cultural artifacts,”

From grocery and to-do lists to notes scrawled on Post-its, Herman slips between humor and scrutiny while unpacking the social narratives and psychological patterns loaded into the uncensored scribbles

Here, in Art of the List, Herman presents and discusses these marks we make, our sometimes desperate attempts to contain the lives we are living in small and sticky spaces:

Boomers YYZ Art of Living