My son Michael has shared with me his obsession with moleskines and passed it on to me. They are beautiful, compact, efficient, and mysteriously addictive. And they are black notebooks. I was reading a book last summer called Songlines by Bruce Chatwin, about Australia and traveling in the outback and he devoted two whole pages of his book to his moleskine. Where I am sitting now, I have four. One 2004 calendar, one large lines notbook, one small plain page notebook and an organizer that has compartments. I have many others.
I started to write about organizing, because that is what my day is going to be. It seems that after any trip, no matter how short, it takes a day to get the laundry done, unpack the final items, put away things and find things. Moleskines help with this. They are great for notes, addresses, sketches of the amazing things we see each day, grocery lists, lists of your favorite movies, or your 10-year goals. No matter how mundane or how lofty, Moleskines are the notebook to keep it in.
Michael has taught me alot about organizing pages and he keeps his carefully labeled and archived in a fire-proof safe. Please check this site links which goes even further. Bruce Chatwin shared that losing your passport is a nuisance but losing your moleskines is a tragedy. I have one that is my trip journal and it is fun to write in some far-away place and read about my trip later.
There is a web site devoted to Moleskinery which will explain it all, so I won't go into it here. But I never go without one tucked in my purse or my pocket, along with a Dr. Grip or a Pilot G2 pen for archival ink. My red Moleskine pocket sized address book is very important to me. Everyone I know and how to get in touch with them is in there. I gave Moleskines for Christmas presents last year. Funny how a neat little book can make such a difference.
We learned the benefit of archival ink last weekend, when something spilled in George's bag and his little (non-moleskine,I lament)notebook that he carries in his shirt pocket, the one with all his phone numbers, pin numbers and passwords, etc. was wet on the top of each page. Only the entries he wrote with my pens were legible. Because he has these written in another book, it wasn't a great loss, but we learned that Mike is right about archival quality pens and I'm so happy he introduced me to moleskines. Thanks, Mike!
Have a great Saturday and I hope we find the camera today. In the meantime, we are leaving to go to Kittery, Maine to the outlets there and breathe a little salty sea air.
