Moleskine

Day 331 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and my brain has a bunch of tiny yellow post-its stuck to it.  So I got myself a Moleskin weekly notebook, a full calendar with a week on the left side, lined note page on the right side, extra note pages at the rear with those thumbed tabs so it can be an address book if it needs to be, and a pocket for carrying, in my case, a bunch of tiny yellow post-its.

Post-its are what I use at work to put the stock number inside the books we list online, and also what I use to make tiny notes on what people are reading.  Then I stick them to various things--now, the Moleskin, perhaps--and collect my thoughts concretely for this blog.

Some of the post-its are figurative instead of literal (see above) and on some days all post-its are lost, and the brain is oatmeal.  Without melted butter and brown sugar.

But I can tell you that a birthday girl is going to be reading a collection of Edgar Allan Poe soon, because her friend just bought it for her, along with a non-fiction book on ghosts and hauntings. And before Christmas, another fine Poe collection went out as a gift for a young woman. Poe is a perennial favorite, to be sure.

And I can tell about the Moleskin Project at Escape Into Life, where artists and writers are creating image and word journals as works of art! If you are interested, you can join at any time.

And just up today at Escape Into Life is a poetry feature by Nic Sebastian, with marvelous art by Ruud Van Empel! Nic Sebastian is a poet who also does wonderful work reading aloud the works of others at Whale Sound, blogs at Very Like a Whale, and runs a community blog at Voice Alpha, always clickable in the blogroll at right.

I got my Moleskine at Borders, half price in the half-price-on-all-calendars sale, also using a half-price coupon on an Illinois road map picked out by my husband, so he can put an updated Illinois on the wall above the phone for ease in navigating road trips to away volleyball tournaments. Alas! We opened it up and Illinois had been cut in half! Northern half on one side, southern on the other. No good, no good!

I looked for words on the outside of the map, warning of this, and there were none. So back to Borders he will go, with the receipt and my credit card, and there may be no way to know if Illinois will be whole on the wall.

Meanwhile, Borders is also in woe, and might end up a hole in the wall.

And, speaking of moles and holes, yesterday I handled an ex-library copy of The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame, illustrated by Tasha Tudor.  I am very fond of Mole in that story, but have only played a weasel, a field mouse, and the barge woman in a musical adaptation of it.

Maybe someday, I can play Mole!

An unlikely post-it.