January 6. I read that page at five yesterday and read it again this morning.
It is the sixty-third page. For a year it was a blank page.
Boxes are drawn on it.
Not ruled with a straight edge. Drawn by hand, and the line bends in two places. There are five boxes and each has a name written on it.
At the top there is a heading. It says Computer Archive Record Form (draft).
It says draft. That means it was something meant to be made.
I copied out the five box names.
The first box is whether it is a first.
The second box is the circumstances of entry.
The third box is recollection.
The fourth box is precedence.
The fifth box is whether it has ended. Beneath that box three things are written. Has not ended, has ended, unknown.
From ten until eleven I matched the five against my log.
On the sixth of October I wrote that there is no box for whether a thing is a first. On the fourth of November I wrote it once more.
On the fifth of November I wrote that there is no box for why.
On the fourth of November I wrote that there is no box for recollection.
The same day I wrote that precedence has two bases and the two are opposed.
The fifth box is yesterday's.
At two yesterday I wrote that there is no box for writing the unfinished as unfinished.
At half past four yesterday that box was there.
Two and a half hours.
At half past eleven I compared the hand.
The writing is mine.
I chose ten characters. It is the method I used two months ago comparing the paper register's eighty-two lines with the fifth bundle. Then I was matching two hands not my own. Today I match my own hand against my own hand.
It came out the same.
My writing is already in this notebook. In the sixth month I carried on the broken sentence in my own hand.
That line and this form are the same writing. Sameness is not grounds. Either both were written by me or both came after my hand.
From one until two I looked for the memory of drawing it.
There is none.
There is no access record. Paper is not stamped as a query. There is no entry in twelve months of log that says a form was drawn. That log is written by my own hand, so it is not grounds. On the sixteenth of December I wrote the same thing.
When recollection and record are opposed there is nowhere in this room to look. I wrote that two months ago and nothing has changed since.
From half past two until half past three I tried to write down what this form is.
There are five boxes and all five are empty.
A form is a form when there is someone to fill it. If the one who made it made it to fill it, they would have filled it in the making. All five being empty, there is someone else to fill it.
If that someone is me, I make it and I fill it. Then there is again no box for writing that it was made.
Otherwise it is whoever comes to this room next.
That someone comes next is a thing learned in this room. I came in January and before I came there was a person in this room. Before that person there was another. That it will go on being so, the only grounds are that the company has not left this post empty for twelve months.
What I received a year ago is one broken sentence. That was the handover. Nothing saying what to do and nothing saying what had been. I read for six months and carried it on.
Because what I received was a broken sentence, six months went into it. With five boxes six months do not go into it. What must be written is written on the box.
Making a box is deciding what will be written. For twelve months I wrote only what the form decided, and what it did not decide I wrote outside the boxes. The ten outside the boxes come up in no list.
At twenty to four I opened the box and turned through the four.
All four have the same one line stamped beneath the last page. I have looked at it many times in a year.
We are watching a little further.
Each of the four wrote their own work. They measured, and copied, and kept, and took down. Not one of the four made a form. All four wrote on paper that was there, and that paper was made by a company or an office.
The one who makes is outside those four. It is the side that gathered the four and attached one line to them.
For twelve months I was the one who fills. Where there was a box I put it in and where there was none I could not. What I could not put in I wrote outside the boxes, and that is ten.
Today five boxes have come into being in this room.
At four I opened the log and drew the five boxes on a blank face at the back.
I ruled them with a straight edge. Drawing took twelve minutes.
Copied out, things grow. In eight months it has not failed once. What I copied today is not a number and not a line. It is a box.
If a box grows, what grows is written nowhere in this room.
At ten past four I thought of asking head office and did not. Asked, they will send the procedure for instituting a form. By the procedure one submits a draft and waits for a reply and receives printed copies once approved. One form last year took four months.
In four months of waiting the ten outside the boxes become twelve and then fourteen.
I decided not to wait. There being no box for writing that one is not waiting, I wrote it in the log as it is.
At twenty past four I entered today's in the five boxes.
In the box for whether it is a first I wrote. It is the first time a box has been made in this room.
In the box for the circumstances of entry I wrote. Page sixty-three of the notebook was copied out.
In the box for recollection I wrote. No memory of drawing it.
In the box for precedence I wrote. The notebook side is first, at half past four yesterday. This side is at four today. A day behind.
The box for whether it has ended says to choose one of three.
What I could not write for twelve months I write today. I marked has not ended.
At five I closed the notebook.
Before closing it I turned to the back.
There is one blank page.
For a year there were two and yesterday it became one. A year went into the filling of one. There is nowhere to reckon when the one remaining is filled. If two go at one a year it is next year, and if yesterday was yesterday for a reason, I do not know the reason.
I put it in the box and counted the things. Six. The impressions on the inside of the back cover are six.
Two months ago I wrote the owner of the sixth impression in three ways. The bundle that came the day before, or mine, or whoever wrote the notebook.
Today there is a fourth. The hand that drew the form.
If that hand is my hand, the fourth and the second are one, and if it is not my hand, the fourth stands apart and the impressions ought to be seven.
The impressions are six.
At ten past five I closed the log.
Beneath the five boxes I drew there is one line, and that line is empty. One row having been written, there is a next row.
There is one blank page in the notebook and one blank row in the log.
There is no box in this form for writing who fills those two.