I began keeping a journal during my senior year of high school. My aunt Noreen bought me a small notebook covered in maps and drawings of the moon during different phases when I was in a play a few years prior. I finally bit the bullet and wrote my name on the inside cover the day I found out that I needed to keep one for my creative writing class. Then I covered it with some favorite quotes of mine.
I ended up using the journal three or four times for actual assignments. It became a lot more personal in the end. I filled it with song lyrics, poetry, prose, and a few sketches. I never really used it as a typical "journal" like you'd see in the movies. I wasn't asking, "Are you there, God? It's me, Marissa," in slanted cursive. My journaling was a form of spontaneous artistic expression. It became a part of my arm. My right fist closed around it so that my knuckle whitened as I moved through the hallways between classes.
Eventually I had to get another journal. It so happened that a teacher of mine gave me one as a graduation present. It took me longer to fill that one, as it had more pages which were larger as well. I'm seven pages away from filling it. It's bound by a spiral, which is great for songwriting because it won't close up if I need to look at it whilst I hold my guitar. The cover is rustic-looking with pictures of pineapples and other things you'd find on an island. I wrote "I can think of nothing but love and fresh coffee," a quote by the poet Fred Chappell from his poem "Recovery of Sexual Desire After a Bad Cold." On the inside cover, for whatever reason, I wrote in capital letters "THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT TO:" and then wrote my name and address beneath it.
Although the writing in the first journal is pound-for-pound a lot less respectable than some of the things from my second journal, I've noticed that in the second one I give up a lot on things that I can't finish right away. It's full of a lot of concepts, whereas the writing in my first journal was complete. And even if it wasn't the best, it was something concrete and resolute.
My third journal started getting filled simultaneously with my second; I needed to keep a journal for my stress management class last semester. My professor encouraged me to use that journal for daily recollections and musings--not necessarily for art's sake, but more for my sake so I would have something concrete to look at and reflect on weekly in regards to my personal life. Now that journal is almost full. The notebook that I used was also from my aunt Noreen. It has mosaic coi on it in pastel colors.
I realize now that I've never bought a journal for myself that went to any practical use. I've bought little notebooks for myself and a few friends have bought them for me but there are some notebooks that I just cannot write in for some reason. My second notebook was one of them--for some reason it felt like there was some miscommunication between my pen and the lined paper. It was heartbreaking for a while before I found a muse who helped me get over that block.
So now I'm in the market for a new journal. Today I must have opened and re-opened and felt and fondled and smelled about forty different notebooks. None of them seemed right. I guess my physical criteria are as follows:
- Must be portable
- Must have subtle cover art
- If the cover art is not subtle, I am often taken with classic-looking or antiquarian designs, especially those of an Asian, Indian, or even European persuasion
- Must have a good texture
- Must have darkly lined pages
- Must be tall enough/wide enough so that I can write a poem comfortably on one page
- The little ribbon marker is a plus, but not necessary
- No magnetic covers--those things are hard to open
- Simplicity always wins over extravagance. After all, it's what's inside the notebook that's important
- No multi-colored pages. White or off-white
- Printed on recycled paper
- No obnoxious or distracting watermarks. If they're on the upper or lower corner of the page, that's fine.
- No specially printed spaces for writing the date or anything like that.
See? I'm not picky. Not picky at all. Buy me a journal. I dare you.
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