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!