This is an entry from my analog journal from a few days ago.....
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I just realized something.
And it might explain some things about my obsessive search for the 'right journal' or 'the perfect paper' or the 'best binding'. It's going to sound absurd, but here goes.
I actually sometimes have profound thoughts. I think in poetic thoughts quite often. I have deep realizations. I also have mundane thoughts. I record daily chores and ordinary routines. Life has repetitive themes, that's normal. We have a set number of necessities that recur in life that are just plain boring. When you keep a journal, those things are easy to record. They seem honest too. Like you are not trying to record your life as some high drama, when all you really accomplished that day was to do the laundry and if you were lucky, the weather was favorable enough that you got to hang your sheets out in the fresh air.
What I'm having trouble doing, is writing the profound, side by each with the mundane.
I feel like the lofty thoughts should be written in a 'special' place, like the beautiful Paperblank brand of journals.
But writing about laundry and bread baking in one of those books seems sacrilegious.
However... the profound thoughts come sometimes in the middle of the accounts of soup making and wood stacking. Unannounced. Without permission even.
So, since I'm not giving myself permission to write in the exquisite Paperblanks, my profound thoughts are getting ignored. Or more like, quashed as inappropriate in THESE journal pages. Do you see my problem?
I haven't been able to combine the spiritual and the mundane parts of my life very well in this journal. And since I sense this, it has manifested in a rather obsessive search for just the 'right' combination of paper, and size, and binding that allows for this complex ability to express both (or more) parts of my existence in this analog format, which is now complicated further by the need for fountain pen friendly paper.
I know you might be screaming at me, "Don't be such an idiot! Stop being such a hard core perfectionist!" And you would be absolutely justified. Because there's no way I'm going to go grab a 'precious' journal to put even more pressure on myself to just 'produce' some gravitas filled pages. To manufacture depth and profundity on demand. It's not going to happen. These things, (if they are genuine) come to you in the MIDST of the ordinary. WHILE you are walking through your sometimes boring day.
When you look out the window as I'm doing now and see the almost full moon peeking through the dissipating clouds of today's storm, while the breeze moves the leaves of the oak trees just enough to make the whole scene smack of portents unknown, but sensed with the soul's antenna. And how the air that has been chilled by being forced earthward by the downdrafts of the thunderstorm are creeping around my bare feet from the open doorway while the deep vibrations of the Tibetan singing bowls that Alexa is playing are traveling through my arm that rests on my desk. . . can one follow that with an account of what kind of sandwich I ate for lunch?
So here we are at a crossroads. Am I able to declare myself free from the restrictions of perfection in these humble pages? Can I untie the burden of unrealistic expectations?
HA! I just thought of a funny idea from Star Wars. Luke talking about the elusive ability to find 'balance in the Force'. The Light and the Dark held together. For me, the challenge is to put the spiritual and the mundane on the same page. That requires no less focused discipline than that of a Jedi Master.
Grocery lists and wind tossed moons... No, wait... here's how I want to say it:
Grocery lists and wind tossed leaves dancing in the light of the moon.
"Make it so."
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