Not the grandest, the strongest or the like. The one most suited to me, which fits me the best of all.

A bit Darwinian, a process of natural selection?

Who is selecting whom, me or the notebook?

It comes down to sensing thr aura, the Zen of the book

Taking the Zen thing a bit further, it's not how do you feel about the book, how does the book feel about you?

It's the Strange feeling, the sensation of losing touch with something.

Pick the book, whatever it is, take it down from the Shelf. You sense something, a sympathetic resonance perhaps? You replace the book on the shelf and continue browsing, and ende up where you started withe the first book you lifted from the shelf.

You take it to the till, pay the cashier, and away you go. The book arrives home and its not the same, strange but it happens.

I remarked in an aearlier post about my first encounter with the Moleskine brand and how I felt it necessary to find the right instrument to make the first mark.

I admit, I fell for the romance of the history described in the pamphlet that comes with each one. I bought the book and the stor and it took me a while to get over it.

It was the day my brain clicked into gear and did the arithmatic. I checked the figures. Page for oage the three pack of the pocket sized cahiers with the soft cover was equal to a hardcover notebook of the same size, and roughly half the price.

I made the switch and awaited an introduction to the Fauxdori, the traveller's notebook lookalikes.

That introduction stared a whole new jounrey that brought me to here, now.

An odd side effect has been to bring to mind all the different notebooks I've used over the years, and decades and attempts at homemade notebooksi I've assembled.

Armed with a printer, photographs and a comb binder, assorted papers and a laminator, and ther research. Documents, downloaded and printed out would be comb bound for future reference.

Nw I'm on the handmade notebooks cut and trimmed to size and bound by a pmaphlet stitch. A new expression of a life with a ntoebook, springing from a surperbly matched surprise gift. The Fittest gift I've received in a long time.

Christmas is around the corner, and this year there is a sense of anticipation of what it will bring.

Only a few more sleeps and we've notched up snow already. The bookies are adjusting the odds for a white one.

Let the dreaming begin!

Martyn

(Image, December 2010)