I spend at least a bit of time online with writers, which means the internet has decided I'm a writer which means it advertises writerly shit to me at every opportunity. I'm utterly immune to all that, as all I've ever needed to write is something to write with and something to write on. Toss in a little pretty-cheap software (Scrivener, in my case) a monitor, and a keyboard, and I'm golden.
The fancy writer shit, special pens, special paper, has zero appeal to me. Give me a medium (number 10) Pilot ballpoint in about any color and a more-or-less 5X8 notebook (I like "Markings" paper, but I'm not married to it) and I'm a happy little camper.
I know writers who swear by their special nibbed old-school True Writer Obsidian Fountain Pen that requires about as much maintenance as a Bell helicopter and which advertises its fine, filled-weight balance, or their particular creme paper with high rag content and "just so" finish.
I never "got" it, never understood. The act of writing is the thing, yeah? All the rest is just wasted motion and the same kind of "posing" that involves very publicly hanging around coffee-shops and bistros for hours working on your "piece", as you'll happily tell anyone who asks and quite a few who don't.
The other day, I was running low on the 5X8 journals. I use them for a lot of things, not just writing, and have been known to go through a few per year for everything from work to a "car" pad for scribbling down miscellaneous junk of one kind or another. So instead of going to WalMart, which I despise on all kinds of levels, I did it the American way and got online, intending to buy five or so of them. I typed "journals" into the search box and punched "go".
And first thing up was… a leather journal. It was "distressed", which is to say, old and beat-up looking, with a leather strap that wrapped 'round it to keep it closed. It looked like something Hemingway would have carried in his backpack, spattered with the blood and dirt of war and bullfights while working the front lines in Spain. It's exactly the kind of thing some wannabe carts around with him to advertise how Serious He Is about his writing. It's the silliest damned thing ever.
And it grabbed me. I have no fucking clue why. I couldn't rest till I had at least ordered one of the cheaper ones. And now I have it, and I love the feel of it, the smell of the leather, the almost unfinished texture of it. I love the act of unwrapping that leather strap that binds it and opening it to write, smoothing the notebook flat. It's all very sensuous, and probably has the same ritual quality to it that is such a strong part of a junkie's "fit", or package of needles and spoons and flame.
I've never felt so stupid in my life. This kind of borderline millennial/yuppie flapdoodle feels like it's in the same class as fake glasses, beard glitter, and those stupid fucking 24/7/365 wool watchcaps the goofy twats wear. But I won't give it up. Here it is:
If y'all have got any ideas on WTF I'm doing here, let me know.
In Our Next Episode: We'll discuss why my writing output has at least doubled since I got this goofy thing. Also, I yell at a Starbucks barista for not using almond milk in my Iced, Half Caff, Ristretto, Venti, 4-Pump, Sugar Free, Cinnamon, Dolce Soy Skinny Latte, nor bothering to explain to me why soy isn't almond before I almost poisoned myself. It's almost like the bitch didn't see my leather journal or something.
Because leather.
ReplyDeleteYeah. Leather protects like nothing else. And I do love the touch and feel and smell of leather. And there's something about wrapping and tying a new-finished, slightly-rough leather strap around personal property I want to control.
ReplyDeleteLike a journal, for example.
Or some other things, perhaps.