Feeling: wordy
Listening to: Alanis Morissette - Precious Illusions
Reading/Watching: The Two Towers

Today in Borders I stood in front of the usual display of empty journals, covered in beads and baubles and flowers and gimmicks, made from recycled or colored or gold-edged or pre-lined paper, and I was seduced.

The tramp in question was innocuously small, a hundred or so lined white pages, bound in cardboard with a black background, and covered with embossings in gold and mother-of-pearl. As I hunted around all the designs, I realized that the one I liked best was the only one of its kind.

So naturally, it became magnetically attracted to my hand. Try as I might to shake it off, it clung stubbornly. As I walked through the store looking for Nimsay, four other books found their way into my arms, sneaking in sweetly and smiling with their wicked little cover-blurbs and intriguing artwork.

I managed to give the slip to the books, even though they sang the siren song of buy-three-get-one-free (a very catchy tune), but the journal would not be deterred. She made such weepy-eyes when I went to put her back, the unique iridescent design gleaming, and the empty pages begged, saying, "But we'll be so lonely sitting here."

I tried to tell her I was already seeing someone: was, in fact, in about three serious relationships (although I think the bond between the Desmond Journal and me is quite unhealthy... a series of sporadic one-night-stands), but she said that was okay, she didn't need that much attention, she could wait her turn.

Now she's in my purse, intimidating me, because a book so beautiful should be filled with beautiful things. I should be working on filling my other poetry spirals, photo albums, and depression-wells, but instead she has followed me home.

It makes me want to become the kind of woman who sits in tiny vague bistros, sipping tea and scribbling furiously (without a trace of writer's cramp, mind you), watching the world pass by and rendering it in ink. Makes me wish I had the courage to grab a bus to some distant city, armed with nothing but the promise of an empty journal and my guitar (if I played guitar), and sit on street corners finding myself, or perhaps finding that "myself" is still wandering the streets of Schoolville, waiting for my journeying golem to come back.

I need to start carrying a blank journal with me, for spare seconds on busses or waiting in the doctor's office.

That, combined with The Two Towers which is already hogging the majority of my purse-space, should make my arm drop off at the shoulder in no time, and I can switch from being Katie, lost Fishbelly-Polygirl to the one-armed art kitsch queen.

I think journals have become my sickness.

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