A few evenings ago, I picked up a well-worn notebook from my desk and began to copy a short passage from the work of fiction I was reading. I wrote to the bottom of the page in the notebook, turned the page, and found I’d reached the end of the volume.
It had taken 20 years, but I had finished my first commonplace book.
Commonplacing: when I started doing it, I didn’t even know it had a name. I was simply scribbling down tidbits that left an impression on me, gathered from the various things I read. There were gems and oddities and words of startling relevance, sometimes in unlikely places. I found material in news reports, classic literature, and the nonfiction that dominates my reading list. There was no plan or structure. I simply had to write things down.
Why? Some words resonated within me. Others entertained or warned or comforted me. I wanted to remember the words and the writers who wove them into larger works.
Physically, my commonplace book is a mess, or it has character, depending on how you look at it. That’s what comes of years of different inks, varying penmanship (I sometimes scrawl when I’m in a hurry to get something down), and things crossed out or underlined. Some of the pages look jumpy and unsettled. Any resemblance to my own character is coincidental.
I copied liberally from books by and about my sisters and brothers in the Catholic faith. Dorothy Day is in that commonplace volume, and so is Flannery O’Connor, along with Popes, saints, and strivers. Deep spirituality marks some entries, but I especially like the ones with down-home practicality. St. Francis Xavier: “The best way to acquire true dignity is to wash one’s own clothes and boil one’s own pot.”
Working as a pro-life advocate in a political environment, I read a biography of Chief Justice John Marshall, and came upon this from a letter he wrote in 1801 to his friend Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. It’s an evergreen reminder that political chaos didn’t start with our last election. “There is so much in the political world to wound honest men who have honorable feelings that I am disgusted with it & begin to see things, and indeed human nature, through a much more gloomy medium than I once thought possible.”
From John Adams to his soulmate Abigail came another political sentiment that I could understand. “I am weary of the game. Yet I don’t know how I could live without it.”
I have written extensively about my favorite places to hike in my state. In all those thousands of words, I’ve never managed to convey the depth of my love for this land as succinctly as did Stacey Cole, a columnist for my local paper. “New Hampshire has been good to me and good for me. Here it has been that I have feasted on the marrow of life.”
There’s much more in my old commonplace book, and I can revisit it at my leisure. It’s time to start a fresh volume. It’s a small blue bound notebook, a gift from a friend. It might be the only commonplace book I’ll need from now on; after all, the last one made it through two decades. At the moment, this new blank book is pretty and tidy – too tidy. I’m eager to put it to work.
This post is shared to the monthly Open Book linkup hosted at My Scribbler’s Heart and CatholicMom.com.
Ellen Kolb 