Birthing a Journal

The broken binding and pages falling out of my poor journal.

 I finally admitted to myself that I needed to retire my current journal. It's always a sad day to me when I have to do this. My journals go everywhere with me and I get very attached. The more they fill up with notes, sketches, thoughts, collages, poems, stories, quotes, and other randomness, the more they take on a personality of their own. Each of my journals has it's own character and identity even as it reflects parts of me. It's like looking at one of my kids and seeing many of my qualities in them: my build, same tendency to climb everything in sight, my love of literature, but then they are also their own completely separate and unique being as well. Artist Wassily Kandinsky said:

"The true work of art is born from the artist: 

a mysterious, enigmatic, and mystical creation. 

It detaches itself from him, it acquires an autonomous life, 

becomes a personality, an independent subject, 

animated with a spiritual breath, 

the living subject of a real existence of being."

I'm certainly not trying to claim that my simple little journals are anything quite like the "true work of art" that Kandinsky is talking about, but I do feel like they give me a taste of what he is referring to. I've had it happen with a few of the stories that I've written. When the writing is at its very best, I feel like I'm just there to deliver something already alive, that wants desperately to be born, with as little damage as possible.

I suppose it should't be that hard for me to let this journal go. It's not like retirement means the journal just goes in a dusty box somewhere in the attic. I still refer back to my journals often when I need something I put in one. I keep them nearby and we stay acquainted like when a kid grows up and moves out, but still calls and comes back for birthdays and holidays.

This is what happens when you leave your journal on the dashboard of a hot car.

So now I have the new one. It's always a little scary looking at all those blank pages: What will I fill them with? Will there be anything any good? Will it get lost or damaged? Will the stupid binding hold up for once? What if I don't end up liking the size, shape, and weight of the paper? So many nervous questions. But at the same time, it's exciting. All the possibilities! All the potential! Who knows what amazing thing this new journal might grow up to become! What a beautiful word: Potential. That unknowable capacity in each writing project, work of art, or human being that gives us hope.

The new guy. We're still in the getting to know each other phase.