There’s always a Christmas-morning kind of thrill when I start a new Moleskine, the page under my pen feeling crisp and fresh. What pleasant excitement there is in the expansive possibilities of a fresh new notebook waiting to be filled! It’s like starting a new semester, where you have the possibility of doing good on past promises: a fresh chance, the opportunity of a do-over. Maybe this time won’t be a re-hash of past missteps: maybe this time you’ll get things right.
I have a ritual for the start of a new Moleskine. I open and discard the cellophane wrap and take off the paper band, pressing sharp creases to preserve the folds left by the notebook’s edges. I put this paper band and the “history” pamphlet that comes with every new Moleskine into the back pocket. Then I sort through the stuff from the previous notebook’s pocket, taking out duplicate ticket stubs and the envelope of perpetual carry-overs I faithfully transfer from one notebook to the next: a calendar, leftover money from past trips to Canada and Ireland, and a handful of pictures of J and Reggie. I put these into the new notebook’s pocket, thereby initiating it. This is a kind of continuity, assuring that even a new notebook has some history behind it, like starting a new fire from embers of the previous.
Because I use my Moleskine pocket to store ticket stubs, I end up with a kind of scrapbook or time capsule of good times. When I sort through the old notebook’s pocket, I’m revisiting recent adventures: museum visits, sporting events, films. It’s a reminder of things I’ve done and places I’ve been, an implicit promise that these good times will continue in this new notebook’s “next chapter.”
If I didn’t have this way of keeping track of days–of literally keeping time–I’d have to invent one, but this method works (for me) as good as any. Now that I keep my daily to-do lists in my notebook, I have that additional kind of daily record–an account of how I spent my time. Although I hardly ever go back to revisit a truly old notebook, they’re all there on the shelf I want to dip into my own history: a silent record of days past.
I like keeping notebooks for their own sake, even if I don’t go back to “use” them. Like a time capsule, my notebooks exist as artifacts in the layered archaeology of my own life, each day piling atop its predecessor. Someday, perhaps, I’ll go back and be amazed at how I used to live my life; someday when I’m older, I think, even this record of mundane to-do’s and their accompanying dramas–these daily obsessions–will fascinate like windows into an age then forgotten. What was it like, I’ll wonder, to be a month over 40, in mid-winter, writing and alive? My notebooks (if nothing else) will remember and be able to tell.
I wrote these paragraphs in my journal this past Saturday on the occasion of filling my latest Moleskine. I always feel a surge of satisfaction when I’m able to turn the page from one notebook to another, and this particular page-turning marked a noteworthy milestone: the 20th Moleskine I’ve filled since I started using them in August, 2002.
Feb 11, 2009 at 11:40 pm
I love: Like a time capsule, my notebooks exist as artifacts in the layered archaeology of my own life…!
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Feb 12, 2009 at 6:39 am
Yes. I’ve always thought that journaling is like being a scientist of yourself, always recording evidence. So instead of Jane Goodall recording the behavior of chimps, here I sit, recording the inner and outer impulses of one Lorianne Disabato: such a curious specimen! 🙂
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Feb 12, 2009 at 8:07 am
Coming to the end of my notebook (I use the Miguelrius notebooks because I like the flexible covers) and getting excited to start a new one. Should coincide with my upcoming trip to Santa Fe. My previous two started with trips to Mexico and Paris, and have the stamps stuck to the covers to prove it! (You can see by the slow pace of filling the notebooks that I often forgo the journal for the blog, but *this time*…)
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Feb 12, 2009 at 12:07 pm
I am inspired to try to keep a notebook again. I have done it in the past and never finished them. I love the no parking picture.
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Feb 12, 2009 at 5:46 pm
Leslee, it sounds like you keep travel journals, which thereby excuses you from having to journal when you’re home. If you can’t fill ’em, rename ’em. 🙂
Anne, I manage to fill notebooks only because I’ve become very settled in a routine where I write after I’ve walked the dog in the morning. I also keep my daily to-do lists in my notebook, so that fills up pages.
I used to collect half-filled notebooks because I only wrote in them when I felt I had something “interesting” to say. Now, I just scribble away, regardless of whether I feel “creative.” So my attitude toward journaling has definitely changed over the years.
(And yes, I love that “no parking” picture, too!)
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