This season is always weird for me. I was raised as a Seventh Day Adventist Christian, so Christmas is something that we do, but I was also brought up through the late 80s and early 90s when black nationalist rap was shaping my consciousness, and back then A Tribe Called Quest, Public Enemy, and the Poor Righteous Teachers were empowering us to overthrow the tyranny of the Christian calendar, much to my mother’s chagrin. It’s been easy for us to keep the peace though. While Wikipedia tells us that the Christians may have borrowed the date from that Roman party animal of the cosmos, Saturn, I’m not so mad about it that I can’t enjoy the feasting. Plus my contrarian position means that no one really has to buy me anything, and I don’t really expect anything. This is convenient because my years as DJ/student didn’t often leave me with much at the end of the year. There usually isn’t much that I really want anyways. Fellowship is its own reward.
But this year is different. And no, the nature of fellowship hasn’t changed. What has changed however, is your favorite writer’s favorite notebook. And I want one. For me and, moreover, for Ottawa. Thank the good people at Moleskine (from the MoleskineCity page):
This area is dedicated to the city and to urban life, to travelers and residents, to independent and free-thinking people.
MoleskineCity is associated with City Notebooks, the first guide you write yourself.
Each city includes a page where you can find basic information, updates and curious facts.
Here you can organize your trip or your own personal way of experiencing the city, your own paths and interests.
Dare I say that in the coldest capital city in the world, this pretty much melted my face on sight. I mean, not only am I currently engaged in the process of putting together a cultural mapping process, but I LOVE Moleskines and have for years. I’ve been charting my progress on this process in my Moleskine. (Recently I graduated to the Plain Reporter Pocket Notebook from the Plain Pocket Notebook and there’s no going back, but that’s neither here nor there.) It’s amazing how Moleskine is focusing on the city and on facilitating a deeper engagement with it by offering a bit of cultural and spatial context and letting you fill in the rest. On beautiful acid-free paper and bound in the finest leather to boot. There are very cool informatic implications if they could somehow digitize the process, but it’s almost cooler that things remain analog. And they’ve started with some pretty interesting cities. But where’s Ottawa? How does a city get onto this list?!
If there was a Santa, he’d figure out a way to get Canada’s capital in the next round of Moleskine Cities!! Or maybe I have to ask that other guy…
And now, with all the greetings of the season, some music.
Happy Holidays!
December 23rd, 2009 at 12:04 am
Wow, I’d never heard of Moleskine. We’re plotting a trip to NYC to see among other things A Little Night Music and I’m going to order the Moleskine guide.
I wonder how to get Portland on the list? I mean, Seattle?? It’s just Los Angeles with rain. Seriously, if you figure it out let me know.
The analog-digital thing is interesting. I have a writer friend who when she’s doing journalism uses a laptop but for personal writing or fiction uses a pen for the physical connection. Also an architect who sketches a building before going to CAD on his computer to work on the details.
December 24th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
Michael, I would have figured for all of the great stuff you post on here that there had to be a moleskine or two somewhere in reserve. You’ve gotta get yourself one man! Your thoughts will thank you for it!
Yeah, I don’t know how we’d go about getting ourselves listed, but I’m atually gonna investigate this. As soon as I have results I’ll definitely share.
The analog digital thing has been a subject that I’ve had rolling around in my mind for quite some time. For all of my musing about the informatic city I have a very very basic cell phone, and don’t really text or anything like that. I write in little note books, call people on the phone and access the internet from a terminal. Seems stone age, I know, but it’s how I live. Would a migration to a fully digital/mobile/3.0 life accellerate things? Would it increase my connectivity that much more? Does it diminish my sense of individuality for a more collective perma-connected sensibility? I dunno. In some ways a person’s routes through the city are so personal, but some people believe in sharing information as a way of life. Tearing down the boundaries implicit in analog-only life seems to be the mission of the digital age, but are all boundaries bad? Or do we just have to evolve new faculties?
Tough questions in this here age of collaboration.
December 30th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
Right there with you. I am not about stuff and things…but I admit to a deep moleskin fetish… I am also big on ballograf pens. It’s the design and heft of both. Perfection.
December 31st, 2009 at 4:57 am
Did you get any freebies from Moleskine for writing that post?
December 31st, 2009 at 8:14 am
None yet. If you know someone, hook that up! I seriously want to know how I can assist in getting Ottawa on that list. Anyone from Moleskine out there??
January 14th, 2010 at 12:21 am
My NYC Moleskine arrived from Amazon. What a combination of eras and styles. The original format is 2 centuries old, hand assembled and meticulous. The guarantee says “If, despite our best efforts, we have overlooked a defect of any kind, please let us know. Send an e-mail to info@moleskine.com and include a digital photo that shows the problem you found, the quality control number (that identifies the notebook in your hands) shown here, along with the model number and your mailing address. We will send you a new notebook.”
Wow. We’ve gone from a notebook style unchanged since Van Gogh used one to quality control that assumes you have the means to take, and send, a digital picture.
The NYC version has little old fashioned maps divided among many pages, which we probably won’t use – we’ve collected lots of NYC maps over the years which are more user friendly. But the formatted pages for making notes about “restaurants, legends, recipes”, “places, dreams, adventures”, “books, music, movies” will create a wonderful trip record for stories and planning future trips. Great organizing tool — the little boxes for each place or incident almost encourages Twitter-length entries. It almost makes me want to use a fountain pen, but I’m too heavy handed.
I love how travel is evolving. We’ll be finding our way with iPhones and recording in Moleskines. No more hotels but condos rented for a few days from VacationRentalByOwner.com. Theater tickets purchased online and printed out. Flying into Newark using VISA miles and taking the New Jersey train into Manhattan. Henry Miller and Hart Crane would recognize the basics, but everything has been upgraded. Le plus le change……….