This evening (I wanted to say ‘today’, but it is already dark, and especially so being midwinter) I stopped at Border’s in Concord on my way from Meredith to New Boston.
When I am idle and dissatisfied, bookstores and new journals have a lure for me that is less powerful in sunny days of content employment and companionship. As you can see, I bought a Moleskine, despite my aversion to anything potentially pretentious or cliche. “The notebook Hemingway wrote in!” the sticker boasts. As if one could leech genius through similarly-patterned paper.
I don’t believe that’s true any more than I believe buying an overpriced cappuccino at Cafe de Flore makes you anything like Sartre. Or that walking in the New Hampshire woods on a snowy evening brings you closer to Robert Frost. If anything, such copycat behavior simply displays your unoriginality and desperation.
I bought a Moleskine because it’s sleek and smells good. The paper is a pleasing shade of papyrus (not blindingly white), and it has a nice, soft, velvety feel. It’s flexible, too, and unostentatious. No fruity quotes, no distracting illustrations. It manages to be both feminine and masculine at the same time, and possesses the capacity to take on the spirit of whoever is scribbling in it.
(something I once wrote in my "real" diary)
It does smell good and also stands up to the rain (I'm in sweltering Seattle) and getting thrown into backpacks.
ReplyDeleteI find I buy new ones before I have filled up my current notebook.
I'm a serial offender when it comes to that . . .
ReplyDelete