Tuesday, March 6, 2007

Paper and soul

14 February, early morning, 2007

Rebecca, a valued reader of my blog has the gift of insight. So many of the things she sees or keeps on clean page beg for some day's future reflection.

Rebecca shared her insight with me after another reader of her journal took my comment and did an entry on just a few sentences. After a long entry about her writing, I tried to picture Rebecca hammering out words for an entry a keyboard.

My mind froze because I knew she preferred to honor her words on paper before she shared them with us. So out of curiosity and the need to picture the author's writing process, I asked what kind of notebooks she carried around to observe other people. 'I do that!' I quipped silently as I read her entry, and so I wa to see if any other similarities existed as we wrote. To find them would give me confidence even when it wasn't looked for.

7 March, late night, 2007

So the question remains - what paper do I use to write? The simple answer is that writing for me is a self-destructive process. Every entry, every post drains me of something else to say or think. And then, of course, it is too easy to forget and overlook what it means to put words on a page: conviction. So many people think, but so few have the conviction to write and place the soul on paper.

Voldemort was on to something when he trapped part of his soul in his diary. I look back at the scattered journals I keep and it's so very clear that they don't chronicle my life, they chronicle my soul.

On the practical side, my journal is lined, though only faintly, which is somehow fitting for my dual self. I tend to write in journals others give me, and I write in fits and starts, depending on my soul's need to speak.

For musings of the moment, or random jottings, I use a moleskine; can you really go wrong using the notebook of Picasso and Hemingway?

I have one preference for my journals, however. I always write in cursive and I always use an ink well and stylus. I feel a part of humanity partaking in the great tradition of correspondence when I put nib to paper.

On a side note, what do you do when  you become concerned you are both light and dark? Do you hate one and love the other? Hate both? Love both?

 
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