My journal collection

I type faster than I write. It's sad but my handwriting, always of the spider dipped in ink and dropped on a page type variety, now looks like the spider was fed speed prior to it's dipping. I prefer to commune with my keyboard since my brain speaks to my fingers without actually going through me. So how does this explain my fascination with books, not the reading variety, the blank ones that you buy to impart notes, thoughts, things.

I have a lot of them. When I go shopping in the metropole I usually come back with a couple of notebooks, lined with funky covers, that kind of thing. I get them as presents because I am a writer, or so my friends claim. It is somewhat bizarre that I collect them, accumulate them in my book room (with the printed matter) when I generally use my computer to write.

As a child, my nickname was "sours". According to the passel of uncles, I didn't speak much, I didn't like people, I certainly had no pretensions to being sociable! My mother might have hoped that this would have been remedied by the time I was of school age but alas, I went through primary school in this state. Needless to say I was not one of the more popular kids. In fact, it wasn't until after Common Entrance results, in an attempt to make Kim Robinson feel better about not passing for a "good" school even thought it was her second time, I opened up. After a while she turned to me and said, " you're really quite funny, how come you were never like that all the time? You should be yourself!" Well blow me down because up until then I hadn't really dared to speak to her, she was like a little princess and I was intimidated.

Over the years I haven't changed so much on the inside but I have learnt to play to my audience a bit better and I'm intimidated by very little. But that's where the journal thing comes in. I don't write all that much down but I like looking at the covers, some handmade for me by Richard who understands me and catches me in the books he makes for me. Inside, the pristine pages are an invitation to explore, whatever. It will not matter, I can be me. Even if I never write it down, the promise is there. When I do get around to using one, it is like an old friend that gets lugged from place to place until the pages are all covered in my scribble.