I have just changed my journal over. It wasn’t planned or anything. It just happened that my old one ended on the day of the new moon, at the end of December. I opened the new one: fresh, with that distinctive smell of paper I love to bury my nose in. The clear cellophane it came in has been carefully folded and placed somewhere safe. Then I am faced with the first page: what to write? Which pen to use?
My handwriting on any first page always looks the same: childish, as if this is the first time I am holding a pen. I’m doing it badly, and it seems like I barely know how to write. The paper feels different on the first page. It’s pristine, almost sterile. It’s all new, shiny, and smooth. It’s intimidating. It stares back at me, defiantly: What? Hurry up! Make it quick, but make it nice.
I want to fill it with small, tight symbols and loads of letters. I want to sketch and add splashes of watery paint, giving it that distressed, vintage look but non-shabby-chic, thank you very much, courtesy of someone with a BA and MA in Fine Art. Instead, my F's, H's, and R's look like something a 4-year-old would do, on a heavy dose of Calpol, with their tongue sticking out in concentration: tuuuuuesdayyyy thirtyyyyffffirst of de-cem-ber. There you have it! My 2's in 2025 are rounded and curly, in a way that I don’t even recognise as mine — I studied technical drawing! My 2's should look like repressed virgin nuns bowing their heads.
I need to get to the first third of the book, where the pages are crackly, thick, and heavy, and you can feel the ridges left by the pen on the reverse side, like a personal inner Braille for the soul. Mmm, I wonder what I just wrote on the previous page! I glue pieces of cardboard — leftovers from fancy teabags — smudge incense sticks, and leave the marks of my morning coffee right there at the bottom. The pages are filled with ALSO and then SO and more HENCE and a series of AND and AND and more AND…
It's like the first dip in the sea after a cold winter: it’s spring and warm, but not yet summer and hot. That page is electric with expectation. It’s shouting at me: C’mon! Fill me, woman! (She sounds like an angry, fat African-American woman in my head.) Even the pencil won’t stick easily. I put both it and the journal in my bag, and when I take the journal out, I have to rummage for a good couple of minutes to find where on earth that pencil has gone! I’m hunched over my bag, going through everything I carry, and then my glasses slide down my nose, my hair gets caught in the frames, and I get frustrated. I just want to throw everything in the bin and go to bed. I blame out loud the one who shan’t be named, sigh, and move on.
A third — just a third. I need to fill the journal up to a third, and then it becomes mine. Then it belongs to me, and it becomes a he, a rightful member of my tribe. It starts opening up on its own to the right page when needed, full of links, arrows, and big CHK THIS PAGE notes or a large SYNCH scribbled in bright red marker. I’ll even start writing page numbers, and actually refer back to them.
That’s when it becomes a map: it is Ariadne’s voice gently whispering in my ear, Told ya! See, you got there in the end! Have you also noticed this other thing?
In the morning, it’s the first thing I grab. In the evening, it’s the last thing I touch before switching off the light, turning on my side, and wishing myself a good night.
Sometimes, I take it out, open it, and write nothing. The desire to fill those pages — to be sitting in Paris, or Istanbul, or Boston, filling every line with witty comments and wise reflections — is so intense that my skin almost turns leathery and warm. I close my eyes and can smell pain au chocolat, rahat lokum, or proper clam chowder. All those sensations, my senses on high alert — and no words to convey them. Absolutely nothing. In none of the languages I speak. I can only caress the white pages, hoping I can still infuse them with experience, if nothing else. Other times, I write about not having words, no ideas. Nothing. Just a desire to write, an almost compulsive need at times.
This afternoon, I watched The Secret Life of Walter Mitty again so this is what I copy on that first page:
To see the world
things dangerous to come to
to see behind walls
draw closer
to find each other
and to feel.
That is the purpose of Life.
For the past 12 years I have religiosly filled al least two notebooks per year. I think that copying this sentence on every first page could become my new tradition.
earnestly, yours.
mx
ps: yesterday I have discovered Messy Mat but I will tell you all in the next entry.
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