A Textual Derivé

In this book I create the words, the history. It logs my thoughts, my ideas, their references, but not their results. It records the origin of many pieces. It holds the shape of my body, residing constantly in my back pocket. I have secured it with gaffer tape to endure my abuse. A stylized black book. The brand is common to the intellectuals, a popular choice. Probably made by slaves, er.. i mean sweatshop laborers or the third world. Forget that, nobody wants to think about that, least of all me. I live comfortably with my notebook, my moleskine.

Their public relations rhetoric reads...
"MOLESKINE IS THE HEIR OF THE LEGENDARY NOTEBOOK, USED BY EUROPEAN ARTISTS AND THINKERS FOR THE PAST TWO CENTURIES, FROM VAN GOGH TO PICASSO, FROM ERNEST HEMINGWAY TO BRUCE CHATWIN.
THIS SILENT AND DISCREET KEEPER OF AN EXTRAORDINARY TRADITION, WHICH HAS BEEN MISSING FOR YEARS, HAS BEEN REPRODUCED BY THE ITALIAN COMPANY MODO & MODO SINCE 1998. WITH ITS VARIOUS DIFFERENT PAGE STYLES IT ACCOMPANIES THE CREATIVE PROFESSIONS AND HAS BECOME A SYMBOL OF CONTEMPORARY NOMADISM.
MOLESKINE IS A FAMILY OF NOTEBOOKS FOR DIFFERENT FUNCTIONS, ACCORDING WITH A FREE MINDSTYLE, BOTH BASIC AND EMOTIONAL."
Bastards! They sold me on the romantic notion that this little book spawns creativity.

It was the winter of 2004, I had spontaneously hitchhiked from Oslo to Helsinki with a girl I barely knew. In order to escape the winter chill, we ducked into a bookstore to kill time and warm our feet. At the time I realized that my old reporters notebook was full, falling apart at the metal spiral. I was in desperate need of a new writing pad in order to document this journey. It was then that I spotted a small black notebook with an elastic band around it, a description printed on a neatly folded paper strip all concealed within a plastic wrap. I couldn't resist. I pocketed it and left the store.

I was proud of my new acquisition. For, at the time, stealing was not beneath me. It was my act of opposition to an unjust society. I still had the memory of Palestine in my mind. A people suffering the slow strangle hold of a dominant state. The acceptance of oppression comes easily when the life is slowly being taken away. The slow strangle hold. The memory fresh as I returned to our comfortable world. So far away, yet so close. I could see the bankers strangling us from our dreams, the politicians squeezing our liberties from us, and the media pushing us toward a fear of everything unknown. So I stole that notebook as a sign of my resistance.