Tuesday, March 13, 2007

The Moleskin(e) Chronicles...



MOLESKIN: according to Wikipedia, a moleskin is a type of fabric, a refined pelt of a mole, often manufactured by British mills... The article also contains this interesting association for the word 'moleskin'...

...A moleskin is also, allegedly, a pink (flesh coloured) piece of covering for the genital area of a female. The name derives from the shape of the covering. Such were often used by moviemakers in Hollywood. The most famous incident involving a moleskin, was when
Janet Leigh lost hers during the shower scene of Psycho. Not thrown at all, she merely remarked that no-one (meaning the staff present) was seeing anything they had not seen before...

MOLESKINE (with an 'e') : is a trademarked brand of tiny personal journals, that, according to the parent company Modo & Modo, "is 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...originally produced by small French bookbinders...by the end of the twentieth century the moleskine was no longer available..."

Perhaps more interesting, is the exhibits of last October in London (alas, I was nowhere-near-here yet) which showcased a number of moleskines by famous artists and writers...

Long story short, I am not meaning to plug a product. In fact, I am only a recent devotee of my own little Moleskine, but confess to keeping it everpresent in my daily life here. My last journal tuckered out and was full to the brim. And it was lined...which discourages and distorts doodles. So, last week, I bought a moleskine. Then, upon finding the double-entendre imbedded in the word itself, I warmed to it...as to all powerful, and seemingly serendipitous metaphors. So, here begins the Moleskin(e) Chronicles...which for lack of modesty, show forth what the moleskin(e) hides...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
An excerpt from the moleskine of a conversation I had with a stranger on a bench today. There were children playing around me, and it was a rare moment of connection with a live human being among all of them in this city-hive...

HIM: do you have any children? you seem to enjoy them...

ME: No! Uh, no, I'm too young. (embarrased laugh and then the thought
"actually biologically, and even socially, i am not too young...")

HIM: i'm Ali, by the way.

ME: i'm Whitney.

HIM: Oh, Whitney. (over-pronouncing the "t"...a common Britishism) ...like, 'witness,' right?

ME: Yeah...I guess...Whitney, like witness.

HIM: very nice.

ME: do YOU have any children?

HIM: (hesitates with a deferring laugh...) Me? Well, yes. One. It's a bit of a story. I made one promise to myself, and that was to never have children. But, then I met a Japanese girl in 1997, and I, well, I made a mistake...

ME: hm.

HIM: ...sweetest mistake I ever made though...

ME: I'm sure.

HIM: ...three years in courts, and now I have to stay with her if I want to see my son. How many children do you want to have?

ME: Two. A girl and a boy.

HIM: both by the same husband?

ME: Well, yeah, ideally...I guess so...

HIM: Why?

ME: Um... hopefully I will love him and like him steadily and enough and that is what I will want...

HIM: Love? Like fancy and like and affection and sex... I am not sure they belong together...

ME: hm... ...I have to go now, I have somewhere to be. It was a pleasure to meet you, Ali...


(and then I realized that we had conducted the whole conversation without questioning each other's nationalities...)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi! I was surfing the web and I stumbled across your blog, well I also go to Mary Wash so perhaps it was just a matter of time haha.
I laughed out loud at the conversation with Ali,life is full of weird moments like that.
I look forward to reading more of the Moleskin(e) Chronicles.