notebookery

notebookery, by Andrew T. McCarter

(via www.impassio.com)

He began by dating the entries in his journal, then numbering them consecutively, then simply calling them “sun” or “moon.”

Blogging software would not support without customization.

Year, month, day, hour, minute. . . . Those journal writers who record all such nonsense only wish to show us what restless, insomniacal souls they are, and how they conquer time by breaking free from diurnal existence.

I had to remove my sidebar calendar because I had no desire to show how diligent or lackadaisical a blog writer I am. Did I conquer time?

My journal (a notebook, really), exists, at least superficially, outside of time. Rather than chronologize, I insert entries between previous entries, as one inserts pieces in a jigsaw puzzle.

Sometimes I want to go back and put an entry in between existing entries, using a fake date.

Just as writers of free verse viewed writing sonnets, villanelles, and iambic epics as artificial and restrictive, so he, keeper of a notebook, writer of notes only, views writing poems, stories, and novels; to him they are just another set of formalists.

I’m really feeling a tyranny of “form” lately. I find myself comparing formalists to conservatives.

How many of these entries parody.

I don’t know if people realize that my journal entries parody emotions.

Forget the melting of genres, even the concept of “book” is becoming passe. Thankfully, a move from the static to the dynamic. The website, available to all, everywhere, and which can be forever revised by its writer. Writing freed from the physical page.

Working in that dynamism, I also find I’m wanting to learn more about letterpress printing.

… and more but … time’s tyranny …