I brush my thumb over soft leather that I guess a salesman would refer to as buttery. It is a classic brown, less intense than coffee, that reminds me of milk chocolate softened by the sun or the heat of a warm hand. The pages are edged with the tiniest sliver of gold, so that when pressed together, it adds an air of luxury and refinement, but individually is subtle. Each page is crowded with writing. I notice the propensity for blue ink, but there are smatterings of black, green and purple, as if creativity could only be held in restraint for so long. The writing starts off crisp and neat, letters carefully rounded and swirled, but it gains slope and size as the pages go on, as if the words came faster and faster, bursting out of the author’s imagination and on to the page in an increasingly messy scrawl. I know, all too well, how good intentions fall into disarray with time and passion.
Lovely writing. The tactile experience of a journal compared to a keyboard is like chalk and cheese.
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Very true. My lifestyle means that digital writing is so much easier for me to do regularly, but I miss handwriting in journals. Every now and then I try to go back to it, and have half a dozen unfinished journals lying around as a result!
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I must admit I take a small journal when I travel. I could just as easily make notes on my phone, but it doesn’t feel right.
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I do the same, actually. Sometimes I just bullet point things to write up later and sometimes I write out paragraphs. And I always take a photo of the sign telling me where I am and what I’m looking at, so later it’s easier to know what a photo is of! When photographing castles in the uk, this is particularly useful!
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Yes, I do that to – iPhone photos of signs with info about art/sights.
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