Leather bound with crisp linen pages. Delicate paisley pastel illustrated with pink pages. Fractal pattern bursting with bright colors covering clean white pages. Each journal offering on display for sale at Barnes and Noble is beautiful and tempting. I want to buy each one; to claim just a small corner of of the grand happiness in the universe that these books-as-a-work-of-art represent.
I’m struck with the same impulse whenever I find myself browsing in Pier One. The store carries these delicate glass jars in different colors and shapes and they are things of great beauty in my eyes. I have discerned no practical purpose for the jars but I want to hold onto that fleeting feeling of joy that bursts inside when they are before me. In the same way, the journals are seemingly useless in my home. I don’t keep a personal bare-all-my-soul diary any longer. Jon had always advised me of the folly of committing momentary emotions to paper lest they prove to hurt another who might stumble across them later yet I persisted in keeping them anyway until my own shame at what I’d written as an angst ridden teenager slapped me senseless in my early thirties. When this happened, I burned my entire collection wholesale in a dramatic flourish one afternoon in the back yard.
So there I was, standing before the beautiful collection of journals yearning to buy one without any conceivable use. It would be senseless to commit temporary lists or work notes to such pretty books. And to leave them unused sitting on a shelf would be a tragedy. I forced myself to finally move past the display but the journals continue to pull at my heartstrings every time I let myself think of them.
Perhaps one day I’ll allow myself the indulgence of useless pretty journals and tiny glass decorative jars.
I’m struck with the same impulse whenever I find myself browsing in Pier One. The store carries these delicate glass jars in different colors and shapes and they are things of great beauty in my eyes. I have discerned no practical purpose for the jars but I want to hold onto that fleeting feeling of joy that bursts inside when they are before me. In the same way, the journals are seemingly useless in my home. I don’t keep a personal bare-all-my-soul diary any longer. Jon had always advised me of the folly of committing momentary emotions to paper lest they prove to hurt another who might stumble across them later yet I persisted in keeping them anyway until my own shame at what I’d written as an angst ridden teenager slapped me senseless in my early thirties. When this happened, I burned my entire collection wholesale in a dramatic flourish one afternoon in the back yard.
So there I was, standing before the beautiful collection of journals yearning to buy one without any conceivable use. It would be senseless to commit temporary lists or work notes to such pretty books. And to leave them unused sitting on a shelf would be a tragedy. I forced myself to finally move past the display but the journals continue to pull at my heartstrings every time I let myself think of them.
Perhaps one day I’ll allow myself the indulgence of useless pretty journals and tiny glass decorative jars.
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