The Elephant Vanishes A Novel by Haruki Murakami On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April MorningThe Wind-Up Bird and Tuesday's WomenThe Last Lawn of the AfternoonBarn BurningSleep+1 More
Barn Burning A Short Story from The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami The first in agesFive barns worth burningI keep getting older
On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning A Short Story from The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami 100% perfect
The Wind-Up Bird and Tuesday's Women A Short Story from The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami Who I was supposed to beQuittingA regular wind-up toy world this is
The Last Lawn of the Afternoon A Short Story from The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami She was wanting to break it off
A Slow Boat to China A Short Story from The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami Can you even call it memory?Never any place I was meant to be
Untangling the Bank An Essay from Field Notes on Science and Nature by Bernd Heinrich Specific aimsMore than a witnessPeculiaritiesSecrecyIf it wasn't written down+1 More
Specific aims Having specific aims, I then started to add almost everything else I could think of that might help me monitor and control my progress.
More than a witness Documentation has made the difference between simply being a witness to nature and being one who identifies themes and questions.
Peculiarities Taking notes has always helped me zero in on the interesting questions. In taking field notes, the way to find these peculiarities is to keep track of as many observations that may not appear at the time to be relevant at all.
Secrecy At a glance, my journal seems to be a mess. It is not meant to be seen or read, except by me, and often not even that.
If it wasn't written down I’ve been keeping journals of one sort or another since I was a teenager, and if there is one thing I can now confidently say about all this scribbling and note-taking, it is that if it wasn’t written down, it didn’t happen. The more I wrote the more that did happen, because all this process stirs up ideas. Stopping to sit and write costs time and energy, and some biologists feel that it should be discouraged.
An active participant Note-taking helped transform me from a young boy on barefoot runs who passively observed the tangled bank of the Maine woods into a naturalist-scientist who is an active participant in unraveling the mysteries of the natural world. notetaking