Darkschunt 
Saturday, November 18, 2006
After having not even looked at my own blog in ages, I realized that there's something wrong with my tagboard.
I don't know what, I'm kind of lazy about finding out, but if I do, I will fix it. :)
On other news, I was scanning through an article about keeping a diary the other day. A REAL diary. Not a blog or a livejournal or a myspace blog or any other Internet diary or diary for all to read, but a private, good old-fashion, pen-on-paper kind of diary. The kind of diary you keep locked up with an ornate little key and carry around with you to record your deepest, most secret feelings (and not just random rants like most of us bloggers are fond of boring other people on the Internet with) and, um, the kind that Lindsay Lohan lost at the Maritime Hotel in New York and caused a huge tabloid flurry over?
(Speaking of which, I just typed Lindsay Lohan's Diary in Yahoo Search to find out the exact name of the place where she lost her diary and got 23,700 returns. Who knew?)
Anyway, back to the diary. Not Lindsay's, just diaries in general. I love the idea of having a diary. To have something tangible in your hand, nothing you type on a keyboard. Something you can smell, something you can hold, something you can make personal with your own handwriting (in contrast to using, say, Helvetica or New Times Roman font), and flip back through in later days.
I've just done a lot of flipping through magazines and found the article on diary-keeping. It's actually one of William Norwich's Talking Fashion - Norwich Notes columns in this month's edition of American Vogue. Here, he writes about how certain people - a Greek princess, an art dealer, a biographer and a a fashion designer - records their personal observations and reflections in their diaries. This is the sort of thing I'm talking about - that personal touch, that quality of realness that comes with keeping a diary rather than, say, a public blog.
I've always tried keeping a diary when I was younger but it just doesn't work with me. I have too much to write, I get long-winded, I try to write down every single thing and I just don't have the time in the day to write all that down. Besides, my hand gets cramped with writing so much. And then, there's the same problem I have with blogging - every so often, I get lazy and forget to write for ages before coming back to it again. And then there's the worry that if I do write regularly in a journal, I would run out of pages before long and buy a new journal and then another one and then I'll have piles of journals gathering dust in a cupboard or somewhere and I wouldn't know what to do with them. Shall I burn the incriminating pages or keep them for memories and my children? But if I keep them for my children, what do I do with them in the meantime? They're gathering dust. They're taking up too much space! When/If I move to another house, they're going to be another extra-heavy item(s) to cart around!
Who knows? In spite of all this, maybe I might try to keep an actual diary. If I do, I know what I want. There's a journal in Borders. It's gorgeous - red and gold faux leather-bound cover that wraps around the soft creamy pages half-over the front, supposedly with a crimson ribbon page marker which I didn't find when I gave the pages a cursory flip and inhaled the fragrance of crisp notebook paper. It's also frighteningly expensive for a notebook of some hundred-odd pages.
Maybe I'll just stick to starting a personal journal on my laptop (not a blog, but something in a password-safe Microsoft Word Document). But although a keyboard will make things go faster when it comes to making my super-long entries, it will also take away some of that special personal touch that keeping a journal should come with. It will lose something, take away a bit of pleasure that I have in keeping a journal. And no, I don't want any create-a-font-that-will-resemble-your-handwriting technology. I like cream pages, my own messy handwriting, the soft scent of crushed flowers pressed between the pages. So until I figure something out - keeping a personal diary is something that probably won't happen for a while more. Of course, there is always hope for the computer diary - According to Norwich, Isaac Mizrahi keeps a Hermes diary plus entries on his computer. So there's hope for all. Hope for all.
I don't know what, I'm kind of lazy about finding out, but if I do, I will fix it. :)
On other news, I was scanning through an article about keeping a diary the other day. A REAL diary. Not a blog or a livejournal or a myspace blog or any other Internet diary or diary for all to read, but a private, good old-fashion, pen-on-paper kind of diary. The kind of diary you keep locked up with an ornate little key and carry around with you to record your deepest, most secret feelings (and not just random rants like most of us bloggers are fond of boring other people on the Internet with) and, um, the kind that Lindsay Lohan lost at the Maritime Hotel in New York and caused a huge tabloid flurry over?
(Speaking of which, I just typed Lindsay Lohan's Diary in Yahoo Search to find out the exact name of the place where she lost her diary and got 23,700 returns. Who knew?)
Anyway, back to the diary. Not Lindsay's, just diaries in general. I love the idea of having a diary. To have something tangible in your hand, nothing you type on a keyboard. Something you can smell, something you can hold, something you can make personal with your own handwriting (in contrast to using, say, Helvetica or New Times Roman font), and flip back through in later days.
I've just done a lot of flipping through magazines and found the article on diary-keeping. It's actually one of William Norwich's Talking Fashion - Norwich Notes columns in this month's edition of American Vogue. Here, he writes about how certain people - a Greek princess, an art dealer, a biographer and a a fashion designer - records their personal observations and reflections in their diaries. This is the sort of thing I'm talking about - that personal touch, that quality of realness that comes with keeping a diary rather than, say, a public blog.
I've always tried keeping a diary when I was younger but it just doesn't work with me. I have too much to write, I get long-winded, I try to write down every single thing and I just don't have the time in the day to write all that down. Besides, my hand gets cramped with writing so much. And then, there's the same problem I have with blogging - every so often, I get lazy and forget to write for ages before coming back to it again. And then there's the worry that if I do write regularly in a journal, I would run out of pages before long and buy a new journal and then another one and then I'll have piles of journals gathering dust in a cupboard or somewhere and I wouldn't know what to do with them. Shall I burn the incriminating pages or keep them for memories and my children? But if I keep them for my children, what do I do with them in the meantime? They're gathering dust. They're taking up too much space! When/If I move to another house, they're going to be another extra-heavy item(s) to cart around!
Who knows? In spite of all this, maybe I might try to keep an actual diary. If I do, I know what I want. There's a journal in Borders. It's gorgeous - red and gold faux leather-bound cover that wraps around the soft creamy pages half-over the front, supposedly with a crimson ribbon page marker which I didn't find when I gave the pages a cursory flip and inhaled the fragrance of crisp notebook paper. It's also frighteningly expensive for a notebook of some hundred-odd pages.
Maybe I'll just stick to starting a personal journal on my laptop (not a blog, but something in a password-safe Microsoft Word Document). But although a keyboard will make things go faster when it comes to making my super-long entries, it will also take away some of that special personal touch that keeping a journal should come with. It will lose something, take away a bit of pleasure that I have in keeping a journal. And no, I don't want any create-a-font-that-will-resemble-your-handwriting technology. I like cream pages, my own messy handwriting, the soft scent of crushed flowers pressed between the pages. So until I figure something out - keeping a personal diary is something that probably won't happen for a while more. Of course, there is always hope for the computer diary - According to Norwich, Isaac Mizrahi keeps a Hermes diary plus entries on his computer. So there's hope for all. Hope for all.
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