A Wanderer's Book for Journal Keepers
An inspiring illustrated journal that highlights the beauty in the daily
This week features a short bookish recommendation for those who write about life and those who document life and those who keep an illustrated journal.
“But I cannot express the discomfort I felt at such an intrusion of mystery and beauty into a room which I had succeeded in filling with my own personality until I thought no more of the room than of myself. The anesthetic effect of habit having ceased, I would begin to think and to feel, which are such melancholy occupations.”— Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way
Like most writers,
I love it when I feel like something is well received by readers, when something lands. That’s what we are looking for when we read, right? Something that resonates. We want to feel seen, understood, inspired, uplifted, motivated, and empowered. Maybe we feel less alone, or catapulted, or transfixed. Giving you that is always the goal, but so much is random. Do you feel like coffee or tea today? Or maybe chai? Oat milk or almond or 2% or heavy cream? Or do you take it black?
There is a book review below, a Proustian update, and some recent illustrated journal pages.
Thank you for reading and for looking for light on the water, for light in the darkness, and for poetry in shadows, poetry in impossible places.1
Amy
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🦄 I am going to share a few books in coming weeks, dipping into some of the books that stand out for me and that I think are really wonderful to look through if keeping an illustrated journal is something that you are interested in. I’m not going to put these all in a single post, but I hope you enjoy getting to know, or revisiting, some of these titles. I’ve shared book reviews and art books via the podcast since the very beginning.
When Wanderers Cease to Roam
I have talked about When Wanderers Cease to Roam: A Traveler’s Journal of Staying Put by Vivian Swift before. It is a charming book. Every time I pull it from the library, I am enchanted by it in myriad ways.
There are a number of books you can be inspired by when it comes to keeping an illustrated journal, and I have a list of books and names that I hold close, but there’s something really special about this book. Despite the fact that this is the story of a year of staying home and the title fits in perfectly with the pandemic, this book was published many years before the pandemic.
Month by month, Swift chronicles things related to the month or the season or her environment or what is happening in her day-to-day.
Unlike the journals that are inspired by Illustrate Your Week and that chronicle individual life week by week, a perpetual log of living, When Wanderers Cease to Roam appears to be an assemblage of journal entries, memories, and art from a number of years that have been bundled into this illustrated view of a year, a year as a unit that has ebb and flow and predictable characteristics, discoveries, and inspiration month to month. This may not be a truly synchronous illustrated journal, a journal that was created over the course of a single year, but it reads as if it could be and is a beautiful example of the potential of recording a year.2
From the book jacket:
"Following a lifetime of trekking across the globe, Vivian Swift, who racked up twenty-three temporary addresses in twenty years, finally dropped her well-worn futon mattress and rucksack in a small town on the edge of the Long Island Sound. She spent the next decade quietly taking stock of her life, her immediate surroundings, and, finally, what it means to call a place home."
One of the things I especially love in this journal is the use of small watercolor vignettes, thumbnails that capture natural scenes. For example, the book starts with winter, and one of the very first pages is a set of “scenes from a snow day.” Ten different watercolor scenes document the trees, the shadows, and the path through the woods. It is lovely.
In March, there is a page full of horizontal streaks of paint that document varying kinds or stages of mud. There are thumbnails that show different kinds of precipitation in winter, including snow, wind, sleet, and rain. Another page documents kinds of rain, eight square paintings in a 4 x 2 grid—pouring, drenching, drizzle, spritzing, driving, dripping, soaking, mist—a watercolor for each.3
Beyond the natural elements, the book has a whimsical blend of illustrations of objects and places. Today flipping through, I noticed maps, tarot cards, boots, umbrellas, and tea cups. There are lots of illustrations of outfits and items of clothing, as well as luggage and garden scenes, letters, leaves, mailboxes, and more. There are fruits and vegetables and cats and mittens, chairs, stone walls, and ticket stubs.
This is an illustrated scrapbook that tracks the pulse of a year.
Whether you come at this book as someone who is interested in an illustrated journal and keeping a visual record of your life, or as someone who is interested in nature journaling, I think this is a book you will find inspiring to look at, and it feels different than some of the other books that you might hear about. This is also not a how-to book.
I’ve talked about this book in the past. You can hear more in Episode 240 (2017) and in Episode 482 (2023).
(Update: several people have already mentioned that they can’t find this at their library and that used copies are not readily available. I definitely didn’t post this to try and make people go and buy an expensive book. So please do not feel that you need to procure this book. I am going to be talking about other books in other weekly posts, some of which are much more readily available.)
Illustrate Your Week Pages
Here are a few glimpses of pages from the last two weeks.
I post the prompts for Illustrate Your Week every Sunday here at Illustrated Life.
I am still doing my weekly diary list comics. I won’t be sharing them full-size in weekly posts. In another week or so, I will set up a page for the year. (The 2024 project)
Reading Proust
Everything is long. I’ve moved this section to a separate post for the intrepid—and a great quote three ways. There is a magic lantern, too.
Weekly Bits and Pieces
Related posts: (expect broken links in old podcast notes)
Made It?
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There was supposed to be no letter this week.
The 1% in the fridge is going. Already it has the whiff of sour. While I sniff it to see if we can still have coffee, I know you can scroll one way or the other and find something else. But wait, I could make us tea, and I can add two scoops of collagen and pour some estimated amount from the bright green plastic container of fiber. I can stir it in so that you don’t even know it is there. The tea is blueberry. It’s subtle. It’s nice. There is cinnamon if you prefer. Or apple or peach.
But I planned on coffee.
I wanted coffee.
I.
Writers and creators, we all hope something lands because landing might inspire you to read again next week, but so much is random. Some Sundays I hold my breath as I look for indications that readers found something to hold onto in the bundle of words I shaped and wrapped and tied and left under the tree in the crisscross pocket between gnarled roots, right at the opening that looks like a secret door, a bundle smudged with a shimmery bit of gold, a bit of melted wax pressed with a seal, the authenticity of the pure at heart.
I'm guilty, maybe, of caring too much. Writers and artists alike can understand that, I'm sure.
II.
Driving to a meeting this week, I was unexpectedly routed on a scenic detour that took me off the main road, wrapped me around by a lake for four or five miles before putting me back on the same highway. I was confused by the empty two-lane road, worried about time, afraid of driving into the unknown, and discouraged that everything was a blur. It took an hour and a half to drive to a meeting that was forty-five minutes long.
I found myself thinking about confidence and success and the randomness of it all.
As I come up on the next anniversary of putting a flag in the sand here at Substack, I am continuing to think about ways to both grow this publication and to build in better cadence. I don’t want to diagram sentences. I don’t want to label iambs. But I have been thinking about cadence, and rhythm, and sound, and flow, and Sisyphus.
I have been thinking about the pressure many of us put on ourselves week to week, the pressure to write something that will land, when so much is up to the wind. I have been thinking about what I am doing here, what I most enjoy doing here, what I still hope to find a way to do here, and how I can balance things out and find a better cadence.
Illustrated Life was intended to be more nuts and bolts than it is.
But, I want coffee.
I want words with my coffee.
I spend far too many hours preparing this little package to leave at the foot of the tree each week.
I follow my own inner voice, and I love the time I spend writing here. But sometimes I realize I’m spinning faster and faster, and I can’t control the wind.
Part of me wants to always braid the words and add new threads to the tapestry and connect the dots with all kinds of fancy and assorted and glittery and silky threads that we collected through the years. Part of me will always be stuck in the Mists of Avalon. (I do know this is a problematic reference, but the story is still one I hold close.)
I am a bit early in thinking about these things, but I am thinking about cadence, and about breathing, about the things we take for granted, and about the randomness of it all.
III.
In one of many posts of this type that I saw this week, I read someone’s list about why many of us at Substack are not successful. One of the three points was related to not writing to someone specific. I’ve got that covered, I thought.
I tend to write intimately, probably too intimately. I always am writing to someone. I write to you. But that voice reminded me that for the last fifteen or so years, I knew I had a reader. Trusting that gave me space to write and believe in the power of doing that, to believe in the potential of somehow finding the right thread. Even with all these years of not succeeding with growing my work, my podcast, or my audience, I knew someone believed in me. No matter how many were listening to the podcast or reading my words, there was comfort in knowing I had a reader. I lost that last year, that sense of security and the quiet confidence it bestowed.
I’ve needed to write and to talk. I’ve carried some sword forged in the fire of a dragon’s breath that has helped me cut through the darkness like a lighthouse in the night. Most days, the swinging of the sword is all that matters, all that keeps me anchored.
I have continued to move forward, but I keep looking across the dark waters at night.
What does it look like when a lighthouse light spins at the wrong rate or out of control or dances wildly across the night?
And just when I said I wasn't going to write an intro, I did. This was part of it. I kept the spinning part, the flash of light here and there across water. I buried the rest. That’s how it goes.
The more I flail, the more I spin a blanket of words and just enjoy the spinning and the sound in my head, the weight of a blanket studded with stars.
There was supposed to be no letter this week, but I need the letter.
My roots are always postmodern. You followed the footnote and now feel you tumbled somewhere unknown with no easy rope to return to the surface? Just click the footnote number, or try this.
IV.
Sadly, you can’t footnote within a footnote. This seems to me to be a flaw in the design of footnotes. Shouldn’t they be recursive, able to fold in upon themselves, an accordion of thought tucked away and yet infinitely expandable?
I hit upon something in the pile of words I buried. Next week…
V.
Using the air fryer almost exclusively for the last almost two months has me branching out and making things in the air fryer that I wouldn’t have made that way before. My comfort food typically requires an oven. When you put something in the bottom of the air fryer and cover it with cheese, and maybe pepperoni, things sometimes fly up, and so I have started setting the metal rack on top of whatever I’m cooking. It holds things in place. It offers a little bit of grounding. From there, it’s an experiment to find the right amount of time. I’ve burned up a lot of things at this point. I’ve still eaten most of those things. Finding ways to tether and anchor, to prevent something from flying away or losing sense, is a way of problem-solving, and a way of paving, a way of reframing, a way of building a path with the means and space available.
My impression that this book may be a compilation of years rather than of a single year is based to some degree on the book jacket blurb, which references the many years in which she stayed put.
Some of you have mentioned that your libraries don’t have this book. Don’t go out of your way to try and buy this book. It is just one of many many books that you might look at. I looked though and here is an old video flip through that will give you a better look at the inside: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3JFAaQIJRQ
Since I discovered you last year, I have always felt like every one of your posts has been written to me and for me (and I'm sure I'm not the only one) that everything I have read of yours has had a strong synchronicity and that we have a LOT in common. I kept asking myself, "Who IS this woman?"
As a lifelong journal keeper of mostly the solid text block type, I have been awed by your illustrated journal, and also, as an artist, have wanted to use more illustration/art in my own journal. You keep tossing out these lifelines to that desire, both from the examples of your own that you share and the references to those of others. The questions, worries, and fears you elucidated in today's letter I have been going through with my own blog and actually have not done anything in about two months with it because I hit a wall and just could go no farther.
I would never want to say that any of us readers of your work can replace the main reader you lost last year, but know that for this reader, at least, your work is an inspiration and a beacon (yes, a lighthouse) to keep going, keep sharing, keep believing that it IS important, it IS needed, and DOES matter. Because it does.