Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Filling the Blank Page

This is proving much harder than I originally thought.

It turns out I’m probably a paper-addict. A pulp-o-phile, if you will.
I had a bit of free time on Tuesday as I was keeping out of the house while the maids were wielding their craft, and an hour of that was spent wandering around the inside of a Barnes and Nobles. I saw several sketchbooks and small lined notebooks for sale for $5, and it took quite a bit of will power to NOT purchase a whole stack of them to bring home. What would I do with them, anyway?? I already have so many!
Even knowing better I took a quick whirl around the Moleskine display to look at what they had there. And once again I found myself wanting to purchase the small pink or green notebooks, or the sketchbooks with the thicker paper… I fondled them, rubbing the paper lovingly between my fingertips. I already know as soon as my current one is done, I’m picking up one of those next even though there are other notebooks that want for filling in this house. Is that not silly??
I’ve renewed my efforts to fill up certain books with poetry, others with koans and thoughts on Buddhism, meditation and the process… and still others I just write and screw around in. Probably the singularly least reverential use of a moleskine notebook ever.
I think to myself “Oh, I’ll have them for when I run out of the current ones, since I might not like the designs that come later.”
Really now, brain? I mean… REALLY? When, exactly, are we going to finish up our idea to work on every different recognized way to create poetry? The Bleeding Ink Project we were working on?? Or make that book of fond memories from our childhood? Or even finish the scrapbook from Japan? WHEN, exactly?? So… yeah. I have a hard enough time keeping track of what I’ve got, so I’m going to do my best not to add to it. But even as we’re sitting here I’m thinking back to the lovely smaller notebooks with the inkblock prints by Hiroshige on the cover and I know if I go back there while they’re still on the shelves, I will purchase them. And I hang my head in shame.

Damn my lust for the blank page! I blame my mom for my tendency towards stationary. At least it’s something lame and I don’t have a serious coke habit.

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