Love Thursday - klogging and breaking a spell

When we were in Venice earlier this year we purchased a beautiful notebook from one of the many stationary shops that you find all over the city. We both knew that it was very likely that the book would never be used; that it, like so many of its predecessors, would probably end up being stored in a drawer, wrapped in silk no doubt, and only occasionally taken out to be caressed with a gentle hand, after which we would put it away again until its next outing.

We share an almost absurd lust to own beautiful notebooks. But as I explained in this post this longing is coupled with chronic intimidation, as we believe that anything we write in them must be both profound and written in the most beautiful script. Of course this serves only to more or less immobilise us and prevents us from ever using the blooming things. Needless to say our collection of empty notebooks is by now quite impressive.

And so upon our return from Venice, in an attempt to avoid yet another defeat, we sat at the table with said book in front of us, night after night, trying to come up a suitable use for it. And we failed. The curse of the beautiful notebook seemed to have enveloped us again, wrapped us tightly in its coils and effectively dried up any creative urges we may have had...

Fast forward to a Saturday afternoon walk about a week later and the concept of klogging was suddenly conceived, magically and out of the blue. Why not use this beautiful book to record how we feel about each other? A shared booklog (hence klog) or diary. And so we did exactly that. And we made a pact from the outset that these feelings could be as silly and as unprofound as anything, and on purpose we decided to do away with beautiful fountain pens and instead write with a scrappy old pencil. And it works, the inhibition is gone and we no longer care if our handwriting resembles chicken scratchings. Perhaps we have even managed to break the curse of the beautiful notebook for good.

So my second entry to Love Thursday is a picture of our klog. I love this image because it represents a completely new way of communicating. If you have a partner, or a dear friend and you don't yet share a klog, start one; it's lovely to spend some time with the book, read through past entries, write something new, or just sit and ponder...