Confession: I like throwing up a blog post, a way to stay in touch with you, and a distraction for myself from other must-do tasks. But I’m already mourning the fact that one day, there will no longer be journals, notebooks (which, of course, is now another word for a “laptop computer”), or sketch books. Nothing that holds our secrets. (Nothing for others to discover after we’re gone.)
I still have notebooks, and I have friends who still do. I was in a restaurant the other day here in Hong Kong, writing in my notebook, and a tall woman came in, sat down at a table nearby, and pulled out hers. I observed her for a quick moment, early fifties perhaps, a face not too attractive, but with charm, like an actor playing a minor role in a TV drama series whose name you can’t quite remember. She wore a simple white T-shirt, black trousers and white canvas sneakers. A shawl to ward off the cold air from the air conditioner. She ordered a salad, ate absent-mindedly, and was otherwise absorbed in her writing.
I liked that: being private, even in public. A journal is like that. Private, small things, for the self. Reminders, notes, observations, images and imagining.
Sketchbook pages from Audrey Kawasaki’s website
Blogs and the need to broadcast will kill all that. I sat with my bowl of noodle, and after a while, got absorbed in my own thoughts and my own writing in the journal. When I looked up, she was gone.
1 response so far ↓
duc // Jun 20, 2007 at 9:24 am
From Preyanka, in Boulder, Colorado: “I am a journal person. I have kept real paper journals since I was 10 (I still have all of them). I used to have to write everything out on paper before I could type it out, but, now, for the sake of efficiency perhaps, I have learned to think and type at the same time.”
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