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“…staring at the place where it had stood.”

For the last couple of weeks we’ve been waking up to two cats flanking our pillow like library lions: Saffy on our right, Mat on our left. (Drogon is sprawled at our feet.) This reminded us of something that happened some years ago. Or didn’t happen—we’re not sure we saw what we saw, and anyway we’ve always had bad eyesight and an overactive imagination. Luckily we remembered which notebook we’d recorded it in, though locating that particular notebook took an hour.

The journal entry matches our recollection, except for one bit. We only saw the lower part of the figure, and it looked like the Winged Victory of Samothrace. Which is a massive ancient sculpture that wouldn’t fit in our doorway, and even if it did, it would probably fall right through the floor.

No, we weren’t under the influence at the time, but we had been in a black mood all week. Then that thing happened, or didn’t happen, and for some reason it cheered us up immensely. We told just a couple of people because it was bizarre, even for us.

Us: We saw an apparition.
Them: What did it look like?
Us: The Winged Victory of Samothrace.

The chronicler of boredom told us he was planning to start a journal. Having maintained a journal since we were 12, we can vouch for the benefits of journal-keeping.

1. Writing forces you to organize your thoughts so your life feels more orderly. In our case, writing something down makes it feel more real.

2. It’s an excellent forum for venting, and unlike Facebook and other social media, the things you say in the grip of strong emotion will not come back to bite you someday.

3. The physical act of writing on paper is very relaxing. There’s nothing like defiling good paper. When you’re young it won’t matter if you write your journal on the backs of bus tickets; as you get older you may find that you like having nice things. As Raul says, “Luxury is our revenge on the young.” (We do not approve of the young having too much luxury. They haven’t earned it.)

4. As Oscar Wilde said, you need something sensational to read on the train or during long voyages.

5. It trains you to hold a conversation with yourself. If you can do that, you will never be deathly bored or lonely.

6. You deal with your feelings directly, saving you the cost of going to a psychotherapist.

7. You can express all your romantic obsessions, declarations of eternal passion, and half-serious threats to kill yourself for love without making your closest friends throw up. (In which case you should keep your journal in a very safe place because if other people read it, you’ll want to kill yourself.) Years later, you can re-read your hysterical entries and have a good laugh.

8. Very important for people who write: You can pilfer your journal for material.

9. You’re less likely to forget something if you write it in your journal.

10. If you become famous, it would be of great help to your official biographer. If you intend to become famous, you might want to make your days sound more fascinating than they really are. Embellish. You wouldn’t want to bore your biographer.

Not many notebooks call for an impression of Edina Monsoon. This one, found by Ryan a.k.a. Our Embassy in England, does.

It’s a Lacroix!

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The New Yorker/Penguin postcards we ordered in bulk have arrived at National Bookstore in Rockwell. If you ordered postcards, please post your full name in Comments (It won’t be published) so we can tell Customer Service that you’re picking up your share. Each box costs Php895. You can claim your orders any time till June 6.

Pages from the working notebooks, the “Cahiers,” are written in fluid, all but illegible script, suggesting that Proust wrote quickly and easily. He wrote in lined notebooks, with double-lined red margins, where you sometimes find the absent-minded doodling of the author; at other times, he seems to be elaborating on the things he has set down. On one notebook page, he’s drawn a kind of surrealist collage of portraits (Proust looks to have been a capable, imaginative draftsman) that blend into one another, and which may offer clues to the way he conceived of his novel: an amalgam of people he knew in life, dismantled and reassembled to form the characters of his fiction.

Which reminds us that we’re reading Proust this year.

Read The Thrill of Proust’s Handwriting. Thanks to Butch for the alert.

And check out the syllabus for English 135: Fate and the Individual in European Literature, a class taught by W. H. Auden. (Thanks, Chus!)

The Hobbit limited edition Moleskine notebooks have just arrived and should be at at National Bookstore branches shortly.

The plain pocket notebook retails at Php1140, the larger journal is Php1550.


All notebooks come with a map of Wilderland, in case you need directions to the Desolation of Smaug.

Not a lot of stocks available; we’d stake out the nearest branch if we were you.

Moleskine pocket notebook, unlined, Php1100 at NBS.

Two retro technologies we cling to: writing by hand on notebooks made of paper, and audiocassettes.

Details engraved on the cover.

Plus stickers for customizing. Couldn’t resist cracking it open for a quick scribble.

P.S. Our Wu-Tang name is Sarkastik Ambassador. The Wu-Tang Name Generator knows all!