The Long and Short of It
I have been keeping a journal since I was eight, and even before they were too popular, I was blogging. There was a time I carried on an online conversation with a sort of online friend of mine for over a year, exchanging emails which would now be considered "blogs" almost every day. I kept an electronic copy of the emails, and when I attempted to compile them, I had over a thousand pages, in single space, font size 12.
I love to write. About anything, most especially about my thoughts and feelings - yes, I am my own shrink minus the couch. I used to keep my writing to myself until the advent of the blogging age which emboldened me to do my own sharing. Hey, if narcissistic, self-centered, bad writers can blog, so can I.
I started working in the 21st century, thus, most of my intellectual, professional outputs were thought out from my grey matter down to my ten (sometimes less than ten) working fingertips frantically pressing into the qwerty keyboard. Oh, I quickly learned the art of sending text messages so fast, and I can even do it without looking. Since I was still maintaining a journal (which I painstakingly, though sometimes not successfully, keep up to date), I knew that somehow there is a difference in the way I think when I write straight into my computer and when I write using a pen. I know that if I had a luxury of time, my preferred writing style would be by using a pen. Especially when it comes to personal writings or communications with family and friends, words popping out in stylized fonts seem colder than receiving a piece of paper - a letter, a postcard, or a card, and seeing the effort put in by the writer - the way the first few lines seem to be painstakingly stroked, until the writing doesn't follow the lines, written or imaginary, anymore, or when the slant somehow varies through the letter. If the writing came from a long-time friend, you could even see how his penmanship changed through the years.
To me, writing by hand it is much personal, and given today's technological innovations, surely there is more effort to it. That is probably why I always ask my friends who go abroad to send me a postcard. I keep them in a clear book, and I already have a lot. Perhaps this is the first time that they will know that whatever happened during the day, the moment I lay my hands on the sometimes creased, smeared, postmarked postcard, I feel immense joy.
My sentiments toward writing by hand probably explains my fascination to the Moleskine. When I first saw it in the stores, I found it utterly ridiculous to buy such an expensive notebook. But then, the marketing campaign chased and caught up with me. I read Butch Dalisay's article about the Moleskine in an issue of Metro Magazine and got curious. I read more about it, mostly blogs by people who are Moleskine owners, recounting their love affair with the little black notebook. It is a personal accessory the possession of it cannot be logically explained - much the same way how I explain why I have a mac and not some other laptop. I can go on and on how it supposedly is user-friendly, even if the supposedly difficult to use windows interface I can already work out even with my eyes shut. At some point I will just say, basta!
Recently, I've been experiencing the need to write something down in the middle of the day, in the middle of something, wherever. If it a difference between having mental constipation and cathartically expressing supressed thoughts, the distinct and defined spurting of which is as fleeting as time, then, I need a special notebook I can carry around anywhere, along with a trusted pen. I want a Moleskine.
I love to write. About anything, most especially about my thoughts and feelings - yes, I am my own shrink minus the couch. I used to keep my writing to myself until the advent of the blogging age which emboldened me to do my own sharing. Hey, if narcissistic, self-centered, bad writers can blog, so can I.
I started working in the 21st century, thus, most of my intellectual, professional outputs were thought out from my grey matter down to my ten (sometimes less than ten) working fingertips frantically pressing into the qwerty keyboard. Oh, I quickly learned the art of sending text messages so fast, and I can even do it without looking. Since I was still maintaining a journal (which I painstakingly, though sometimes not successfully, keep up to date), I knew that somehow there is a difference in the way I think when I write straight into my computer and when I write using a pen. I know that if I had a luxury of time, my preferred writing style would be by using a pen. Especially when it comes to personal writings or communications with family and friends, words popping out in stylized fonts seem colder than receiving a piece of paper - a letter, a postcard, or a card, and seeing the effort put in by the writer - the way the first few lines seem to be painstakingly stroked, until the writing doesn't follow the lines, written or imaginary, anymore, or when the slant somehow varies through the letter. If the writing came from a long-time friend, you could even see how his penmanship changed through the years.
To me, writing by hand it is much personal, and given today's technological innovations, surely there is more effort to it. That is probably why I always ask my friends who go abroad to send me a postcard. I keep them in a clear book, and I already have a lot. Perhaps this is the first time that they will know that whatever happened during the day, the moment I lay my hands on the sometimes creased, smeared, postmarked postcard, I feel immense joy.
My sentiments toward writing by hand probably explains my fascination to the Moleskine. When I first saw it in the stores, I found it utterly ridiculous to buy such an expensive notebook. But then, the marketing campaign chased and caught up with me. I read Butch Dalisay's article about the Moleskine in an issue of Metro Magazine and got curious. I read more about it, mostly blogs by people who are Moleskine owners, recounting their love affair with the little black notebook. It is a personal accessory the possession of it cannot be logically explained - much the same way how I explain why I have a mac and not some other laptop. I can go on and on how it supposedly is user-friendly, even if the supposedly difficult to use windows interface I can already work out even with my eyes shut. At some point I will just say, basta!
Recently, I've been experiencing the need to write something down in the middle of the day, in the middle of something, wherever. If it a difference between having mental constipation and cathartically expressing supressed thoughts, the distinct and defined spurting of which is as fleeting as time, then, I need a special notebook I can carry around anywhere, along with a trusted pen. I want a Moleskine.
posted by wernicke at 1:28 PM
0 comments
