Another Notation On The Journey of the Journal

What about flow?
The fluency of ideas, drafts of inspiration—and, as a wanderer, the meander of mindlessness?

As I’d mentioned earlier, the journey of the journal is a way of managing the today, which then becomes yesterday, that draws a line to the future. You look back, recall and re-collect—and, as you journey back, study your observations and explorations, and you get somewhere to the now, the today and the future…

To this notation on mindlessness—what if your journal becomes a scribbling, a scratching at vectors of ideation? It’s a sketch-sauntering; you’re not really drawing anything, you’re scribing the electricity of the mind, which becomes a something in the momentum of the moment. It’s no-thing, per se, but it’s the everything of ideas, a cartography of the mind.

A page from one of many scribble books I’ve drafted.

As I note, I have some books, journals that I’ve made,
that only contain scribbles.

Scratching at the surface, which might be a scarring
that could be a scripting, which could inspire you to:

Scribble.

They are drawn in scripts that only I know. They are circle books — collections of circular strokes. Or books that are writing, symbols, gestures and markings. They are flow books—letting it go, letting it get out of one system, on to another—of mind, to arm, to wrist, to finger tips— thought, to paper.

But, my take, to magical creativity—it’s a transformative force, a transposition of nature, a creating. Making something from nothing. The idea of a collective, a collage, of mind expressions — just go, flow, draw, and create the alphabet and code of your being.

The idea of flow is something I first encountered in meeting Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi—and listening to his talk on flow states, the optimal state of being [happy]. We worked on a flow-related project that you might be familiar with.

While you’re engaged in your scribbling, better to be wholly focused on this mission. Let. It. Go. Flow.

For you, a brand person—strategist, manager, steward or designer—you might ask, “wait, what’s the point, isn’t this a waste of time?”

Could be an idea that becomes something—
like our solution for this brand. A global logo for VF Corporation.

A meander becomes a concrete path.

A meandering might become something.

What if that story, that drawing, might have deeper dimensions—mysteries that might be unknown, undeciphered, untranslated—ever. There are, for reference, ancient scripts that have no alignment to others written—there are no crossing translation references, so they cannot be interpreted. A reference can be found here, to the ancient scripts—there are at least five of them, unknown, unreadable, untranslated: the Indus script:

Susa seal with Indus signs – ALFGRN, CC BY-SA 2.0

Just recently, another one emerged—likely less ancient—but also untranslated, a mystery:

Voynich Manuscript (32) | Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)

The Voynich Manuscript

The Voynich Manuscript, as the Wikipedia entry notes, is named after the discoverer—Wilfrid M. Voynich, an antiquarian book dealer who acquired it in 1912. It is lavishly illustrated manuscript codex of 234 pages, written in an unknown script. A postulated theory is that is was written sometime during the 13th century by a Franciscan friar, Roger Bacon (1214-1294). Many attempts have been made to decipher the text but none have succeeded. There has been the supposition that it was a joke. The careful detailing and structure of the document suggests something deeper, to an exploration of mystery, symmetry, and symbolic patterning.

That book perhaps gestures, to the higher degree, of that notion of the journal as being a place of personal exploratory — either superficial doodling and abstracted notations, or something bigger, deeper, long running, voyaging farther into the mind and the unconscious.

The Red Book (Liber Novus) by C. G. Jung | Image by LOwens at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Being in NYC, a chance to see Carl Gustav Jung’s Red Book at the Rubin revealed a lifetime of examination and meditation.
I ponder too the work of Abbess, Hildegard Von Bingen, a medieval writer, anchorite, theorist, contemplative and spiritual leader—her writings, manuscripts are her inspired inventions.
You can learn more about her from her canonical index at the Vatican. And you can see her own mystic language:

Ignota lingua per simplicem hominem Hildegardem prolata.

text by Hildegard von Bingen, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Deep doodling.

My sense of the scribbling extends from the idea of reaching into the psyche, letting the lines unfurl in the manner of elastic gestures of opening —to the more long term and meditative examination. That might be in the personal script of your making—the secret code of you.

The journal—that is the journey, that is the hour, that is the life — to be made in whatever manner you might make it.

Write, flow-out in the draft of your code, now.

Tim doodling from
GIRVIN’s Queen Anne Elementary School Offices, library and galleries

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