the smedley log - suburban scrawl

Moleskine fever

“Losing my passport was the least of my worries, losing a notebook was a catastrophe.”
- Bruce Chatwin

I’m not the first, and I surely won’t be the last, to be stricken with this particular ailment.

I was in Barnes and Noble the other night looking for a replacement for my Moleskine reporter notebook. I had only purchased it earlier this month, but it has been tragically lost, before I could even fill twenty pages of it.

What I like most about reporter-style notebooks is the top-hinged design. I could pass it off as a hold-over from my failed journalism studies, but it’s actually just about being left-handed. Until I discovered the fliptop model, I was relegated to filling these journals from back to front. It’s not totally necessary, but it is much more comfortable for my writing hand.

Anyway, back to the search at Barnes and Noble…

So I was looking on the partial wall filled with a variety of journals and I realized, that of the seemingly endless selection of styles, there were no Moleskine journals there.

I despaired. And then, as I turned in defeat to leave the store, there it was. A whole floor rack of Moleskines. In more varieties than I had ever seen in one place. Fliptop reporter notebooks, lined, quad-ruled, unruled, and in at least three different sizes. I looked longingly at the regular-sized, lined, reporter notebook, but then something stopped me from picking it up.

It was the three-pack 80-page softcover journals. They spoke to me, in a soft, practical voice. As much as I like the hardcover reporter notebook, I knew that purchasing these shorter (and yes, cheaper) models would more suitable in case of future lost notebooks; less money down the drain, and most importantly, less information lost forever (that is, unless some kind soul finds my lost book and returns it – though, at $20, I may have low-balled the reward offer). I guess I take minor comfort in that it was a freshly-started volume.

Ah, the things you write in a notebook when you’re a journal fiend. All those ideas I would have forgotten years ago if not for the scribbled accounts in my occasionally-referenced collection of formerly blank books.

That Chatwin guy was right, losing a notebook does feel kind of catastrophic, in a trivial sort of way.

I’ve heard so many people rave about this … my greatest tragedy was when my second PDA unexpectedly croaked. Since my penmanship is nearly illegible, I think I would not find much use for a dead-wood medium. I do understand the loss though.

oh man, i’m almost finished with one [squared pocket moleskine] right now. another few months and i’ll need a new one. the spine on those flip top ones doesn’t look like it will last to me. i’ve seen people with them out in the wild, not too far into them, with the spines all messed up. i like the side-by-side hardbacks.

mdmhvonpa,

I’m a very sloppy writer myself, but for some reason I can decode it – for the most part.

albert,

I don’t know about the durability of the spine, but then I wasn’t flipping it all the way over most of the time. I just liked the way it felt, but I’m going with the cheaper models for now, anyway.

[…] Less than a quarter mile down the road I heard a thump, like something hitting the trunk of the car. I thought, “Hmmm, I wonder what just hit the car.” That’s when it hit me that I hadn’t removed the items from the roof before getting in and driving off. The items I’d left on the car? (1) a Moleskine notebook (no, not that one, an entirely different one), and (2) my wallet. […]