Traveler’s Notebook, page 1

A journal page with two quotes.

Today I replaced not one, but two inserts into my Traveler’s Notebook. Which — very soon I might do a tour, because it is my favorite thing that I own.

I like to use the first page for quotes, but I try not to make them famous or meaningful ones. I prefer to write whatever’s going on in my language center at the moment and let the meaning emerge as the notebook gets filled.

Obviously the Shakespeare quote instantly betrays that preference, but it’s the one I kept thinking of:

Make death proud to take us.

From Antony and Cleopatra.

So to make up for it, the first quote comes from a Roadside America entry on Eddie, World’s Biggest Kid, in reference to the children that scurry around his entrails:

Are they learning to be saviors? Tormentors? Inconspicuous plasma passing through?

The whole article is really a treat.

EN: I had a really great weekend post-publishing of my piece in Tedium (linking once more for posterity), but I’m still learning to manage this writing, that writing, and the writing I make for my day job. This week I hope to return to some longer form idea mining. Maybe return to cell phone novels? Although I have some pretty long-overdue thoughts about pandemic media, since I’ve been watching a lot of Jenny Nicholson and made it through her catalog to the lockdown years. February may be the month of the Substack, so I’m looking forward to many exciting times ahead.