Recently, I began rereading The Lord of the Rings. I'm supposed to be writing a book about how Tolkien presents marriage in his works, but I'm getting very bogged down in the Histories and the mythology. So I decided that the best way to remember why it was I wanted to write about Tolkien was to reread the thing I love most by him: The Lord of the Rings.
Meanwhile, I received some lovely things for Christmas: a fine Tomoe River notebook, and a bottle of Diamine Mystique ink (purple with gold shimmer), which I supplemented with a TWSBI Eco pen with a broad nib, which shows off the shimmer:
I am not a person who feels very comfortable with blank books and fine notebooks. I feel like I will mess them up--with mistake or the shoddiness of the thoughts that I have recorded. I have torn pages out of more journals and blank books than I remember because looking back, I just find them embarrassing. I have taken down a few blog posts, for that matter--or whole blogs with years' worth of posts. So the only thing I realize I feel comfortable recording in my book are quotes from what I am reading--a record of whatever strikes me at the time. This is how I began:
But you notice, something different has started to happen:
"I feel that as long as the Shire lies behind, safe and comfortable, I shall find wandering more bearable: I shall know that somewhere there is a firm foothold, even if my feet cannot stand there again."
And continued with Puddleglum:
"I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia."
And then this:
Tomorrow we may come this way
And take the hidden paths that run
Towards the Moon or to the Sun.
Apple, thorn, and nut and sloe,
Let them go! Let them go!
happened to recall this:
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk along long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.
As I believe it always has.
It is, if you will, a Commonplace Book, but also, because it is a book of connections, it reminds me, again, of what things I know. And it strikes me that one of the valuable things in my education was always--and still is--the planting of beautiful words in my head.
With shimmer and shine,
Literacy-chic
P.S. - I am not at all happy with breaking a quote between pages, with my choice to single space the poetry, with my few mistakes, or even my variation in handwriting. And I need to work on wheedling my husband's gold-ink-filled pen on a longer-term basis (that is the color ink that I bought for him!). But I am resolved not to tear out any pages because of perfectionism. New Year's Resolution? We shall see!
3 comments:
I really like the quotations with the connections! I hadn't consciously connected the Yeats and Tolkien verses, but of course that's the echo I heard! What a great exercise.
I feel the same way about notebooks, too pretty and I'm afraid to mess them up. I usually compose in a cheap spiral notebook if I am not doing it on the computer. When I was much much younger I used to have a pretty journal in which I did the same thing, more or less, recording favorite quotes from books. I didn't know the term commonplace book then. But I became self conscious and stopped fairly quickly. Nowadays I copy out poems and quotes but I just copy them into my cheap notebooks where they sit beside drafts of my own work, reminder lists, and notes about medical appointments. I'm not very good at being organized and the more organized I am the more my perfectionist kicks in.
I'm discovering good paper by way of fountain pens and shimmer ink, I think. For me, it's all about the binding. I will splurge on the better paper, but a bound notebook feels different from a spiral, even if the spiral is good Japanese paper. I realized that a little Levenger Circa notepad that came free with a book bag that was an anniversary gift (I think) many years ago also shows the shimmer of my ink! So I bought several things on sale from that line recently. They appeal because the pages can be removed, put into a different notebook, rearranged, or what have you. BUT I could only buy them on sale, and then, very infrequently.
Your last sentence there is so me: "I'm not very good at being organized and the more organized I am the more my perfectionist kicks in." That sums it up beautifully.
I'm glad you can hear the Yeats as well! I used a Yeats quote in an article about Tolkien once. I did almost second-guess it, but when the journal editors let it go, I tried not to worry about it. Tolkien resonates in similar ways to Yeats, but I don't think Tolkien would have necessarily appreciated the connection. I remember reading that he didn't quite consider Yeats as appropriate material for literary study--which is, more or less, what my professors said about Tolkien, sadly enough.
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