The local supermarket is having a sale on paper, pencil and pads. Oooooh. For a stationery junkie this is the closest it gets to heaven.
So today, I steered a slightly reluctant pair of children away from the toys and towards those most seductive temptresses of the stationery world, the Pretty Notebooks.
Whenever I want to give anyone something priceless, I give them a notebook. You know, a really striking one, a floozie, if you will.
Notebooks are up there alongside shoes and handbags for most women. We covet them, we ooh and aah over them.
Watch a woman take a luxury one off the shelf in a store. Her hands will say everything. She won’t need to say a word about the possibilities this beautifully clad swathe of creamy handmade paper holds for her . She’ll open it, stroke it, caress it. I had better stop there.
But today, as I reached out to take my hearts desire, Common Sense appeared on my shoulder.
Nuts.
We are in a high- tech age, it lectured as I listened in sulky silence. Who needs notebooks any more?
With the word processor and the online blog, I hand-write so much less than I used to. I have about ten notebooks at home, all with three pages started.
So I withdrew my arm and I came home empty-handed.
But I was a little sad, and very thoughtful. Because notebooks are full of possibilities.
Those expectant pages could do anything. They have an unwritten life of their own. And somehow, unlike the word processor, they have a comforting 3D solidity about them. They’re for real.
And these words you read, they are posted on a central site. If something happened, they could all disappear in a virtual cloud.
What is it about the pen on the paper? Is it the total immersion of our senses, the skills of thought, movement and creativity all assembled to say something of importance?
My mother- in-law fills hers with lists, dates, a family history, a construct of her life and ours. A computer can’t do that. Not in the way she does it.
At the time of my life when things were helter-skeltering out of control, notebooks, and indeed filofaxes, held an almost mystical significance for me.
Somehow, I thought, if I made enough lists, if I just organised the little things into words a bit more, then the big things would take care of themselves.
When the going got tough, the tough took themselves to Staples.
The visits didn’t help, and all the notebooks in the world could not have come to my aid then. Because notebooks are not catalysts. They don’t perform magical deeds. They are like mirrors: they reflect back at you.
The stuff you write inside – whatever it is, shopping lists, letters, poetry- is a thumbnail sketch of your life at one moment.
The reporter’s notebook is a case in point. These chaotic shorthand ramblings are the barricade between your average journalist and many a juicy court case.
If it’s written in the notebook, and proved to have happened at the vital moment, it is taken as an accurate reflection of events. In law.
Reflection is a much underestimated tool. I was once told to spend a little time each day, just writing what happened, reflecting, and drawing conclusions.
During the three months I managed to keep this up, the words I wrote caused my world to shift. While the exercise could not, and will never, teach me common sense, I think it gave me a batsqueak of wisdom.
It is a token of the power of the notebook that, when he chose to write a nightmare vision of the future, George Orwell wrote 1984: where there were precious few notebooks.
Its hero, Winston, buys a beautiful notebook from a strange old antique shop. There is always the lurking possibility it is a snare (thanks Maddie) set by the State. It is everything it should be: creamy, luxurious, seductive. And he begins to write a diary.
Which is just about the most dangerous thing he can do, because free thought is punishable by much worse than death.
Notebooks may occasionally parade themselves in clothing which is sumptuous, bordering on indiscreet:they may remain in our drawers for decades before something nudges us, one day, to begin to write. But their ability to reflect us remains.
Your notebook, that one that has lain redundant for so long, with just a few pages taken up – that sparkly frippery, that black leather novel-in-waiting, is not only an endless, timeless possibility, it is a human right. It is your freedom of expression. It’s there for you to say it, the way you say it best.
So I shall return to the store tomorrow, muffling my common sense firmly. And I shall write, and I shall think of the millions of notebooks across the globe and their contents, from shopping lists to poetry.
Update: a gem of a one-room notebook exhibition in New York: http://blackcover.net/?p=48
Kate Shrewsday 
Very thought provoking Kate. I am a great list writer and without these lists I would no doubt forget endless things because time is short and my mind over crammed!
I bet if you look back over those lists in a few years time it will tell you so much!
Kate, I understand your blog.
You will remember Peter’s present of a little red book,
and what I did with it!
Love Dad.
Very special book that, Dad 🙂
Thank you for writing this. With your permission, I’ll share the link with an online discussion group, part of Story Circle Network, which is dedicated to women’s memoir.
I’ve been in love with paper all my life.
You and me both 🙂 Thanks Kathy, I’d be honoured to have you share the link.
Writing is an art. Thanks for reminding us of this. I found a notebook I wrote notes and conversation of that children’s book I was always going to write. Perhaps its time to continue.
I keep notebooks of my children’s scribbles. Its quite impressive what their vivid minds create. A line and a circle are so much more to a 3 year old.
I enjoy your writing Kate~
You are so right: I am not a great family archivist but Phil is, and he keeps scribbles from the past. Looking back at those early jottings unlocks more than a photo could:-) .
Your notebook sounds like it has got way past the three-page mark…maybe it is just a fledgeling children’s book waiting to fly the nest… (Oh dear, mixing metaphors deplorably)
NOTEBOOKS! Excuse ths shout, but I am addicted and have to be steered away from them. My friends, though, often buy me very beaustiful ones as birthday or Christmas gifts. Mine are all more that three pages in 🙂 The older Mira’s was almost completely written in a leather-covered notebook, a gift froma a friend.
Can you keep a secret? I have somewhere in the region of forty of them, sitting all over the place. I only have one Filofax though, refilled several times, of course 🙂
Long live notebooks, I say.
And so say all of us:-)
Use lists to aid your memory and to create a sense of personal achievement when the tasks in the lists are completed and can be struck through.
Another gem, thankyou
it is interesting to think the handwritten form will return as a niche, a retired art form like black and white photography.
our children are electronic fingers and yet i still feel compelled to purchase notebooks and crayons. to practice penmanship. there’s nothing like a little hot pink crayola under the finger nails, some ink on the hand and a notebook picture that has been scanned in and sent to the grandparents. electronically.
it’s electric.
It sounds like a great combination…..I don’t have a scanner yet but it sound like it should be on my list:-) Thanks for stopping by, Ugly Earring, that was a wonderful post of your today.
ps I do love so many point hiding in here. Free thought. Punishable. Notebook.
If the Internet turns into public dain and no more anon or privacy. Will a notebook be the only tool left for logging and keeping free thought.
Thank you for the invigorating thoughts and introduction to your blog.
🙂
😀
You know what Ella is like about notebooks! Can’t get enough of them!
Well I had to borrow one for the pic! Thanks Ella. I’m quite sure you will fill myriad notebooks over the years….
I recently moved and as I sorted through the “stuff” that accumulates as one stays in a house for years, I found so many blank notebooks and journals–and a few with a few pages filled. Like you, the computer lures me away from hand-written entries–but your post has inspired me and energized me. I believe I’ll begin again to write in a lovely journal every day, just because. And when I pass a display of more lovely notebooks in the store, I’ll no doubt add to my collection. After all, they could be gifts, IF I wanted to part with any of them…
They make compulsive collecting, don’t they, Susan? Good luck with that journal:-)
I absolutely love new fancy journals and fancy stationary, which is why I took so long to go to computer journaling. I still use them for many things … even if if’s just for daily to do notes to myself, or list keeping of birds I’ve seen, nature sights, etc. I do, however, try to fill each of them before I get too many more new ones, although it’s hard to resist, especially when one I like is on sale. Nice blog. Pat Bean
http://patbean.wordpress.com
Thanks Pat. Your restraint is admirable:-) The notebooks just jump off the shelf into my shopping trolley…thanks for stopping by!
Interesting reflective post, Kate.
I love the idea of a lovely notebook… but if it is too nice I won’t write in it in case I spoil it…
I’ve got a gorgeous one just next to me….completely blank….
Are you going to restart morning writings in there?
Time will tell 🙂
As a long time bookbinder and book designer, I spend too much time on the laptop. Thanks for your post and reminding me of the long lost art of journaling. It’s a must and I need to get back into it!
You and me both, Mia. Its a resolution for both of us! Thanks for coming on over! Your Valentines strategy brightened my day yesterday!
I thought it was just me! I had no idea that notebooks were thought of as being on a par with shoes and handbags! I LOOOOVE notebooks and all stationery. I have a pink plastic basket full of notebooks and a few others stashed away in my desk. But they all have very different – and very IMPORTANT, I hasten to add! – purposes. Even my diary is not kept in a diary but in whatever gorgeous notebook I deem fit (as I prefer an open diary). Current designs include a beautiful lady from the jazz age in some decadent hallway and a New York City skyline at night. Personally, I prefer little stationery shops as opposed to chains or big stores for these particular nik naks as they seem to have more unusal things.
I really enjoyed reading this post. Thank you very much. 🙂
Ah, a fellow stationery junkie…wonderful to hear your experiences are so similar 😀 Lovely blog you have there, by the way- I’m looking forward to a little in-depth reading later…
Thank you very much. 🙂 Consider me a new follower of your blog. 🙂
I keep two journals. One for each of my children. I write letters to my son and daughter a few times each week. I want to write more about writing, but I write so much poetry, I often have a difficult time finding the time. Life gets in the way.
Todays post seemed to be a post about writing, or at least about how all-absorbing it can be. How wonderful to be so in touch with one’s main character. Thanks for coming across to have a look here 🙂