ORIGINAL POST DATE: February 8, 2006

ORIGINAL POST DATE: January 30, 2006

ORIGINAL POST DATE: January 25, 2006

ORIGINAL POST DATE: December 6, 2005

ORIGINAL POST DATE: November 16, 2005

This latest quote is from the book Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell, and addresses the "Grandfather Paradox"" concerning time travel.

ORIGINAL POST DATE: November 2, 2005

This latest quote from the pages of my Moleskinei pocket diary is from the beginning of the book Mysteries of the Alphabet by Marc-Alain Ouaknin:

"The magical alphabet, the mysterious hieroglyphic, merely reach us incomplete and distorted, either by time or by those very people who have a vested interest in our ignorance; let us find the lost letter or obliterated sign, let us re-create the dissonant scale and we shall gain strength from the world of the mind." - Gérard de Nerval (1808 - 1855)

It is precisely the mysterious aspect of ancient scripts that makes them compelling to the artist and poet alike. Nerval was a French poet and bohemian, a friend of Baudelaire. I am not sure what larger context this quote is taken from, but I gather from reading his short biography HERE that he was the kind of writer that was drawn into the mysteries of ancient signs and symbols. As an artist it has always been interesting for me to try to see beyond the commonplace usage of language to the deeper symbols embedded in the words and letters themselves. Nerval's quote is a call to examine this magical aspect of the alphabet, and he even tempts us with a touch of conspiracy theory suggesting that there are deliberate means that keep us from knowing the truth. The challenge is finding something within the symbols of letters, whether contemporary or ancient, that carries deeper meaning for ourselves, since the original meaning attributed by the first writers of these alphabets are forever lost to us. Perhaps it was the way the first writing tools fit the hand that influenced their forms, that the charcoal stick or quill played an integral part in their development and left their own natural imprint into this human communication. Whatever the origin, whatever the form, Nerval's quote asks us to take time to contemplate these letterforms as a way to strengthen our minds. Considering that many early Greek philosophers felt that writing weakens the mind by removing the need for memorization, it may be good advice indeed!

Magical Alphabet Quote from my Moleskine Diary

Here are a few good books on the history of the alphabet:

Mysteries of the Alphabet by Marc-Alain Ouaknin

The Alphabetic Labyrinth: Letters in History and Imagination by Johanna Drucker

Magical Alphabets by Nigel Pennick

The Alphabet Abecedarium: Some Notes on Letters by Richard A. Firmage

ORIGINAL POST DATE: October 28, 2005

Many of the Halloween traditions celebrated in the U.S. originate from old Celtic traditions, so Irish immigrants must have brought many of the common symbolic elements with them to this country. One of the big ones, carving Jack-O-Lanterns, originated with the tradition in Ireland of making an effigy of a head from a turnip. There are not so many turnip carvers around nowadays, especially since pumpkins are far better suited for the job. The general idea is the same though, a scary face with a candle inside, and it hearkens back to the ancient Celtic fascination with severed heads, the details of which I will skip here.

The one ancient Celtic tradition that is most commonly celebrated today is dressing up as otherworld creatures: ghosts, goblins and other frightening monsters. This tradition originates with the ancient festival of Samhain and how that celebration reflected the Celtic concept of time and the calendar. Samhain was one of the four major celebrations during the Celtic year, and is the point in the annual cycle where one year ends and another begins - sort of an ancient version of our New Year's Eve. The Celt's concept of the daily cycle provided that the old year ended at sundown on the last day in October (as it corresponds to our calendar), the New Year began at sunrise on November first. This resulted in a gap in time between sunset and sunrise which belonged to neither the old nor the new year - a time outside of time. This physical break in time was seen as a doorway through which beings from the otherworld could leak into the real world - similar to the concept of the Hell Mouth in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Fires were lit to keep malevolent spirits at bay, and dressing as one of them would disguise your mortal aspect, preventing the terrifying possibility of being dragged into the otherworld by the evil spirits.

I find this idea very compelling, that the calendar year could have a gap in it between ending and beginning again. Our contemporary year moves with very little interruption, and even the general idea of holidays has eroded with businesses being open through all the holidays in the year: 24-7-365. That there exists this concept of a time outside of the regular cycle of time, that the year has to stop for a while before it can begin anew, is something we could do well to embrace, even in small ways. Imagine a time outside of time; something magical that made the phone stop ringing, the internet idle, and had people staying home for some quiet contemplation; just as a reminder of the end of one important cycle, the beginning of the next. It is something almost impossible to think of today - a collectively ritualized secular experience of time - but it is an interesting concept nonetheless. Heck, even the ancient Celts had to have the frightening aspect of otherworld demons to reinforce the Samhain ritual to make them stop and pay attention. Perhaps then what we need is a renewed belief in otherworld monsters to get us to slow down a bit, for one evening at least.

Choose your costumes accordingly and have a great time out of time on Halloween!

ORIGINAL POST DATE: October 7, 2005

I recently acquired some Blackwing 602 pencils to add to my small collection. Writing with one of these pencils in a Moleskinei notebook is a particular pleasure, and I spent some time mooning about it in an earlier post HERE. I have decided to make a limited offer to readers of my blog to allow them the opportunity to experience this for themselves through a combination set of a Moleskine notebook and an authentic Blackwing 602 pencil. In my mind only one Moleskine notebook is up to the task for such a special combination, and that is the Moleskine Museum silk covered notebook. In this combination of items Blackwing provides the smooth, Moleskine provides the silk.

The Moleskine Museum Van Gogh Colours notebooks are a special edition Moleksine that were created in league with the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam in the spring of 2002. These pocket size Moleskines have covers made from silk shantung in bright colors inspired by Van Gogh's paintings, instead of the usual black oilskin cover material. Silk Shantung has a very tight, fine weave with occasional occurrences of thickening of the strands, called slubs in the world of fabric, as part of the weave. They have gone to great care to match the color of the elastic closure with the silk fabric on the cover, and even the expanding back pocket features the same silk on the accordion hinge.

The Blackwing 602 has a growing reputation among writers and artists as the best pencil ever made. Production ceased on the Blackwing in the 1990's, so these are now collector's items, selling for a premium on eBay. The Blackwing features a larger than average ferrule with a flat eraser that can be adjusted outward as it is used. The Blackwing slogun of "Half the Pressure, Twice the Speed" attests to the smooth writing experience they offer.

ORIGINAL POST: September 7, 2005

As a professional illustrator I have specialized for many years in Celtic design. One of my favorite aspects of this intricate style is the interwoven bands of knotwork. Knot TheoryIt took lots of practice before I became comfortable with the underlying pattern for constructing the more complicated knots, but eventually I became familiar enough (through much repetition) with the geometric principles that aid in creating good designs. These knotwork patterns all begin with a system of grids, so Moleskinei notebooks with gridded pages have always been a favorite place of mine to work out the details of a knotwork design. Below is the frontispiece to my Knot Theory notebook, a large size Moleskine Volant with squared pages.

It was only quite recently that I discovered this special branch of mathematics devoted to the study of knots, called, surprisingly enough, Knot Theory. It is a subsection of mathematical discipline of Topology which brings us such novelties as the Klein Bottle. In Topology mathematicians study the properties that do not change through deformations like stretching and twisting, but cutting and tearing are strictly not allowed. To a Topologist a doughnut is the same as a coffee cup, a cube equal to a sphere. This would make for an interesting parallel universe if the laws of matter adhered to these topological principles, and additionally a great plot structure for a possible episode of Farscape (also in a parallel universe, one where this series wasn't canned!).

ORIGINAL POST DATE: August 29, 2005

I came across this great quote on the Alibris website:

"The buying of more books than one can read is nothing less than the soul reaching towards infinity, and this passion is the only thing that raises us above the beast that perish." - Alfred Edward Newton

I am regularly buying books, and it wasn't too long ago that I realized I had reached the point where I couldn't possibly read all the books I have in this one lifetime. This realization didn't actually stop me from buying even more books (i.e., I received three new books in the mail last week), but it did give me a more determined sense of what I will spend my finite lifetime reading. I now will not finish a book just to be sure I have given it a fair try if it isn't satisfying my expectations. If it doesn't grab me by the end of the second chapter, out it goes. There are plenty more where that one came from.

Where there are many books, there are many notebooks as well. I need any number of notebooks to record my thoughts about what I read, and pages to make the connections from book to book. This makes me wonder if what Alfred so comfortingly had to say about book collecting can equally be applied to the accumulation of notebooks. I think it can be said that the buying of more notebooks than one can fill in a lifetime is also a reaching toward infinity. Instead of experiencing a sense of infinity through information coming into the mind through reading, notebooks provide an experience of an infinity of blank pages to fill with what the mind makes of it all. If the infinite is not a part of the process of personal expression that we engage in with our Moleskinei notebooks, then would it really matter that the paper they are made of is acid-free? Yet this is a very important aspect of the success of these notebooks, that what we take the time to put between the pages will last, if not forever, at least as long as we need it to. Any effort at cheating the effects of time, such as choosing paper that will not disintegrate in a few years, is without doubt wrapped up with a passion for the infinite.

I must also address the second half of the quote, the "beast that perish" part. I have checked with my resident perishable beasts about collecting books, and as you might expect they disagreed with what Mr. Newton has to say about it. My cat, who has asked to remain anonymous, said she felt she was speaking for all domestic felines in stating that reading is over rated. "Books are for those who have no imaginations of their own, I simply have no use for them." The idea that her superior sense of imagination and clear sense of life purpose would put her at a lower place than a book collector struck her as being so absurd that she refused to discuss it any further with me.

My dog, Pearl, (who takes any opportunity to see her name in print and so wishes not to remain anonymous), says that it makes no sense at all that she should be considered beneath the book collector since you can't eat books. "What's the point, they don't even taste good? Why collect something like that, where's the passion in that? Clearly this book man has an overly high opinion of himself, but the bottom line is that book collecting is completely pointless." Pearl went back to watching the squirrels at the birdfeeder, and so I figured she was finished, but then she turned around and asked, "Why are humans so worried about infinity anyway? You don't have to reach for it, it is right in front of you all the time." Pearl has returned to her Zen-like meditation on the squirrels. She is sitting so still, I think I will make a sketch of her in my notebook.