Empty Pages

Troubling bits of New Year's Eve angst aside, I love the thought of the new year. I imagine all planner bees do. A clean slate, a fresh start and...a new blank notebook. 

Oh, the joy of a new blank notebook! The sensuousness of caressing those cool, empty pages - pages patiently waiting for you to oscillate. Their blankness is both invitation and temptation. There's the promise of passion - an affair waiting to begin.

And of course you begin with the greatest of tender intention and of showing yourself to advantage. The handwriting is your very best. There are outlines with spacious margins and lots of polite white space. Pink and blue highlighters wait in the wings. Mechanical pencils and new erasers are on standby.

But that's all fairly short-lived. It never takes long for even the loveliest of notebooks to take on the appearance of a relationship gone a muck.

Oh, there's clearly still passion. But now it's stormy rather than tender. It's all over page with arrows pointing to partial thoughts and ideas. There's scribbles and tea stains and doodles and words you can't begin to make out. The polite white space disappears as if your lover is determined to have the last word.

Does knowing this is to be the eventual outcome make it difficult to write that first word? There is a moment of fleeting regret but as you know, I love a good storm.

And after all, there's lots of notebooks in the sea. 

Moleskines (pronunced mol-a-skeen'-a) are my favorite notebooks. They're said to be legendary and have been used by Van Gogh, Picasso, and Hemingway. Are you up for stormy passion this year? If so, you just might need a new notebook of your own. If that's the case, visit www.moleskines.com.