Marginalia.

We have all seized the white perimeter as our own
and reached for a pen if only to show
we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages;
we pressed a thought into the wayside,
planted an impression along the verge.
-- stanza six of Marginalia, a poem by former U.S. Poet Laureate, Billy Collins –

I once used to engage in profuse marginalia.
I was a profligate marginalizer. Uninhibited about the defacing of books. Especially during my college years. My margins were filled with ephemera.
Aside from writing in the margins of my books, I would highlight pertinent items, in every color of the known spectrum. And I was real big on underlining too. Arrows and brackets. And asterisks. And squiggly things.
Cracking open one of my old college books is like peering into a Jackson Pollock painting. What was I thinking? How could I do this to so many books?
I am over it though. In fact, now I am on the opposite end of the marginalia continuum.
I have severe marginphobia!
I keep my books free of all defacement and defilement, and I make separate notes, either in a notebook, or, more frequently, on a few sheets of 8 ½ x 11” paper folded once, which I use as a bookmark while I read, and which I leave in the book afterwards as a permanent reference point.
No highlighting.
No squiggly things.
I now leave my books in as close to their storebought condition as possible.
For the last few days I’ve been wondering about the cause of this evolution in my note-taking style. Should I chalk it down to just another facet of my middle-aged anal-retentativeism?
I will get to my conclusions on these matters in a bit, but first, WHY IS IT that we employ the art of marginalia?
If we do it, WHY do we do it?
Is it as Collins suggests in his poem, to show that we are being attentive to our reading? To show that we are not just sitting in a chair, turning pages?
If so.... then my question becomes.... to show WHO?
Ourselves? Is it to convince ourselves that we are paying attention to what we are reading?
If this is the case, then I can see why I do not do it, because I am always very conscious of what I am doing when I am reading.
Some people read to fall asleep. I read to stay awake! I am really that intense about it.
As I spend half of my life in the mega-bookstore (guess where I am right now?) I even have a ready supply of those disposable earplug things (I call them Frankentein bolts, because that’s what you look like when they are properly installed). I keep a fresh set in my backpack at all times, and when the ambient noise of normal people around me is too distracting.... in go the bolts!

So I recently asked my friend (a skilled and chronic marginator) why she marginalates as much as she does. Even with library books, she will marginatize them in pencil, and then erase all of the margination before the due date. The returned books will have no trace of marginification.
I am impressed with the conscientiousness that is a part of of her overall marginacity.
She mentioned that marginalia can be seen as evidence that one has identified mythically or metaphysically with the author. I think this is an interesting point. I can buy that. It is as though the reader (the marginator) is signifying that they agree or disagree with a certain point being made, or that a scene or passage is resonating with the reader’s own experience to such a degree that some sort of visual addendum is necessary.
In my marginatory research, one thing became clear, early on. It was the fact that marginalizing only really makes sense if one intends to look again at the material at a later date. To re-examine the contents of a book, either for study purposes (to skip the uneccesary data that you hope will NOT be on the exam, and head straight for the asterisks and rainbows etc.), or for personal clarification. The latter thing is done to add your own slant to what the author said. It is as though you are saying “and” and then filling in the blanks.
I do both of these things. I want to refer to the book later (yes) and I am constantly adding my own cross-referential “ands” to what an author is saying. However, I do this addenda stuff in a completely separate area, as I said, a notebook or sheets of bookmark paper.
Thinking of this practise that has seemed to evolve on its own has caused me to finally understand the WHY of it, as it applies to myself.
Reason #1?
Purely aesthetical. I just like the look of newness. I feel that a beautiful book is something just this side of worshipful. I like smelling them, and even sometimes licking them. I am some sort of book..... whacko!
Reason #2?
My views and opinions are in constant flux. This reason is every bit as important as is the aesthetic one. When I look back at a lot of the marginal notes I made in books during my college days, or even as recently as five years ago, I am horrified at how dorky I was at that time. And (here is the thing).... five years from now, I will probably be horrified at how dorky I am right now! So convinced am I of this fact that I end up religiously abstaining from transcribing and immortalizing my current dorkiness in the form of marginalia!
Yes, I will want to look at the book again (if it was a good book) but I will not want to look at how dorky I was at the time of the first go-around.
I am the type of person who is always writing personal journals and then throwing them away. Destroying them. Why do I do this? Because when I read the old stuff, it is always way too dorky.
So I shred it.
Good books however? See, I don’t want to fall out of love with a good book just because it is tainted with marginal ideas I have fallen out of love with. So I keep it clean.
What I am saying begs the question.... “Don’t you hate looking at your old notebooks then?”
Strangely, the answer is no.
These books are where I press my thoughts into the wayside.
I keep them in huge three-ring binders, and I actually like looking through them. They are crazy. A wildland. A zoo without cages. This is where, like an unleashed rhinoceros, I let the pent-up highlighting and asterisking energy run rampant!
And the squiggly things? They are everywhere. Running amok in wild abandon until falling down, like Pollock-thrown paint.