The penny drops finally: the necessity to work in multiple. Haunted by memories of the very first school (preparatory - but for what?): surrendering the exercise book as proof of thorough work. The back cover ceremonially torn by the Headmaster's secretary. Later, ritual humiliation by the Maths teacher: "I've finished mine as well". "As well? But he has finished his better than you!". Pedantry and pedagogy. Always the spectre of wasting paper: "don't scribble on that ...".

Which is as much to say to have several notebooks on the go. Another self-crippling strategy - what must go where? It doesn't matter! Or, alternatively, have many places. Before it was easier: the commonplace book. Copperplate handwriting, the cultivated flourish, cellar book, quotations maturing over time. Now, so many options: handwritten scrawl, the xeroxed copy, cut & paste from Word. Why even bother with the notebook? Why not the netbook, iPod, iPad, Blackberry, the virtual page? Is the Blog the notebook by other means?

So I'm abandoning the idea of the one volume kept going through thick and thin and ultimately getting stale and boring - work is getting too dispersed, convoluted, various and downright awkward. Instead:

• A4 jotter for daily writing: plenty of empty space to squander and not feel 'precious' (the 3-pages a day regime if nothing else)
• dedicated A4 notebooks for specific projects or periods of time
• little notebooks for quick writing, stuffed in the pocket, a train journey, off the cuff
• lever-arch files for anthologizing articles
• Moleskine A5s for the school terms - good size & compromise
• cheap jotters/ the old school exercise books - for economy and space - it was stupid in Rome to lug a thick volume around in my bag everyday
• orihons, folded papers, special formats for asemic writings

And some rules:

• movement between and across the notebooks: by means of xeroxing, scanning, cutting and pasting
• a page is not 'done' - it can be added to, excised, reworked
• blank pages are not a crime
• projects and notebooks can be left 'fallow' and reopened later

& etymologizing ...

... Thoreau's pond.

"a small body of still water of artificial formation" (noun) ... "to hold back or dam up a stream ... to pound ..." (verb).

Closely allied to 'ponder':

"to weigh" ... "to estimate the worth, value, or amount of; to appraise" ... "to weigh (a matter, words, etc.) mentally ... to think over, meditate upon" ... "to consider, meditate, reflect ... muse over ...".

Penned water.

It occurs to me that what is Thoreau's Journal but a pond? The act of writing an act of movement in, over, through reflection. The ripples sent from each entry: the Journal: the house: Walden pond: the local: the surrounds:

(((((( . ))))))

Why echoes fascinate Thoreau - what might we sound in tranquillity?

To construct not necessarily one's own cabin but to maintain a daily routine of pondering. The page into which one looks.

*

"We wake the echo of the place we are in, its slumbering music." (September 19, 1850).