I have a notebook. A beautiful notebook. Filled with pages made of handmade paper and covered with handlooms from Jaipur. When I see a beautiful notebook, I feel compelled to buy it. I have no idea what I'm ever going to use it for..not for college notes definitely, it's much too gorgeous and precious for that. Beautiful notebooks make me think of poetry. Of Keats, Dickinson, Neruda and Rumi. Beautiful notebooks-leather bound and filled with not just yellowing pages but also a promise of a story. The slightly musty but nevertheless irresistible smell of the pages are like sirens. Calling you to them, asking you, begging you to write in them; to confide your deepest, darkest secrets. Notebooks, to most people, are just inanimate objects- you write in them and throw them away when you don't need them anymore. For me, they're stories waiting to be written. Maybe not heard, but written.
Notebooks give you a chance to be unapologetically yourself, no judgements. You can be mean, sappy, lovesick or euphoric, a notebook is always willing to listen. While novels and storybooks are good friends in their own right, they are always telling you their own story. A notebook lets you tell your own.
