ORIGINAL POST DATE: August 17, 2006

The title for the post comes from the following quote by Alfred North Whitehead:

"The vitality of thought is in adventure. Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them."

This is a combination post of "Quotes for Your Notebook" and "Moleskineⁱ Creations" themes, brought about by my need for a notebook to have handy to toss various ideas into. I generally use my Moleskine Pocket Daily Diary to record stray thoughts and brief ideas - of the more random and passing nature of made up movie titles or simple plot outlines for stories I will never get around to writing.

I also needed a notebook that would provide the space for larger ideas, where I could write several pages compared to the several sentence lengths in my daily diary. I chose a Moleskine large kraft Cahier with squared pages, but since I have several of these floating around for different uses I wanted the idea book to stand out from the others.

I started by making the painting of the light bulb in my pocket size Moleskine Watercolor Reporter notebook. I used watercolor colored pencils and Pitt brush markers to paint the image, and then removed the page from the notebook. I cut a hole in the cover of the large Cahier in the shape of the light bulb, and then used a combination of glue stick and tape to secure the watercolor page inside the front cover. I am happy with the results, and it is easy for me to find this notebook among the clutter on my desk.

If Alfred North Whitehead's words are to be followed, then something indeed needs to be done to keep our ideas - and the pages of a humble Cahier might be just the place for those vital intellectual adventures to work themselves out.