I always carry a little notebook in a pocket, whenever I leave the house, and a fountain pen clipped to my sweater’s v-neck. (When I’m home, the little notebook is poised on the corner of the desk.)
I tried making voice memos on my phone, but the user interface is awkward, I was always tapping the wrong button. And besides, I had to transcribe the notes once I got back home, so why not just write them down in the first place? And there’s all the background noise in the recording — sometimes I couldn’t make out what I’d said.
I tried Evernote and Simplenote and something else, I forget, on the phone, but plinking out text on the tiny screen keyboard was tedious and I frequently had forgotten the end of the sentence I had in mind by the time I got to it. Worse than useless! And besides, I eventually abandoned the phone as too expensive — nearly $100 a month after all those fees and taxes and surcharges and whatnot get piled on top of what seemed, a first blush, a reasonable rate. That’s a thousand dollars a year! And it’s not as if I ever use the phone to make calls.
So the issue was settled when I stopped carrying a phone. Paper it was. But this opened a whole new realm of choices.
It needed to be thin — no bulk. It needed to be small — to fit in any pocket. Or I would end up not carrying it.
I started with a little Moleskine bound in kraft paper. The price was right. (Mais le vrai Moleskine n’existe plus.) I liked the sewn binding, and the perforations on the last few pages, and the little pocket at the back. It worked well with pencil, but with a fountain pen, there was too much bleed-through, the paper was not opaque enough. And I’d grown to dislike carrying pencils. They either poke you in the fingertips, or through the bottom seam of your pocket, and in either case quickly grow too dull to write crisply, unless you carry a sharpener with you, and, for me, that was just one thing too many. I don’t like ballpoints of any kind, they write too smoothly, I need a bit of drag against the paper to write legibly — probably because I’m used to pencils. A fountain pen (a cheap one) feels just right. But then there was the bleed-through issue. I couldn’t read my own notes!
I’ve turned to Field Notes notebooks. They use staples and I hate that, but the paper is better than Moleskine’s. And I have to confess that I love their Colors series. (I’ve subscribed!) Four times a year they ship you a bunch of little notebooks with some eccentric, gimmicky design conceit. Those who have read more than one of these miniature essays may have gathered that I adore eccentricity, gimmicks, and conceits. Oh yes. Let us not be ashamed. Wood covers! Constellations! Beer! Gilt! And so on.
Still, I remain open to conversion.
I’ve yet to find the perfect pocket notebook. Perhaps it does not exist. But I do like my little Pilot Metropolitan fountain pen with Namiki cartridges (it comes with a converter for using bottled ink, but I’ve been afraid of leaks). It’s the perfect size for my hand and has just the right amount of friction against the page. It’s a delight, and one must never frown at delightful things.
