John Milton kept one. So did Thomas Jefferson and Ronald Reagan. And countless not famous people. I keep one myself.

Commonplace books or journals or computer files vary in form and intention, but all are collections of quotations, sayings, and various bits and bobs the collector finds worth hanging onto. Arthur Conan Doyle kept information under headings useful in the crime-solving activities of Sherlock Holmes. John Milton focused on marriage and its fragility after his wife left him. Some people – probably many – have kept commonplace books not given to any topic or purpose, like picking up seashells on a beach. That last is what I do.

Commonplace books are not given to the thoughts and words of the collector, except perhaps inferentially. They are not diaries or journals. Beyond that, there is no agreement about what goes into a commonplace book. It can be, I suppose, photos, audio files, or clippings, but they are not scrapbooks. It seems the most common stuff of commonplace books is snippets of something read – a nice turn of phrase, an especially wise or telling few words, a single word.

Further, I think the best practice is to keep one’s commonplace book in longhand. Numerous studies show that writing by hand involves the brain in a different way from typing. It offers advantages in memory, critical thinking, and learning. At staff meetings of at least one prominent computer company, professional geeks take notes by hand on paper. Beyond these concrete, practical outcomes, writing by hand can have an emotional feature, which is dignified and elevated by using a fountain pen and ink.

I have a pen that my dad owned and used for everything he wrote at home. (At work as a pipefitter, I doubt he wrote much other than instructions regarding measurements and the like, and for that he used some sort of marker.) I can’t say for sure that the pen I have was actually his. I may have forgotten buying one that looks like his. But it’s close enough. It bears his presence. When I refill it with ink and put it to work, he pulls up a chair beside me, and I honor his memory. Regrettably, I seldom use it these days. Time has rendered my handwriting so illegible I can hardly decipher it myself. Even my grocery lists appear to be in some secret code. So these days, I type my commonplace entries and send them onto a hard drive. It is a mechanical act.

By using a computer, I gain the ability to find old entries easily; just press “SEARCH”.  But no. Surely, a better way is to go through entries one by one, I do the same with my books and CDs. I don’t keep them in much order, so I have to go through many in order to find the one I’m after. That’s always a pleasure. I find books I had forgotten owning. Such searching is not as enjoyable as sex, but it’s pretty good, and it would never happen by pressing “SEARCH”.

Here are a few entries from my commonplace book (file). I doubt they will engage you as fully as they have engaged me, but they should give you a sense of what a commonplace book can be.

The addition of area codes to phone numbers is a “further lowering of the graydigit cloud that hangs over us.” From Roger Angell’s charming essay on turning ninety, This Old Man. It’s captivating writing that I enjoy revisiting in part  or wholly from time to time, I suppose it;s obvious why it resonates with me. 

A character in a Flannery O’Connor story has “a face as broad and innocent as a cabbage.” A charming description of a person I expect to spot on the subway one of these days.

From Robert MacFarlane’s The Old Ways. Musings on the last years of his grandfather, a famous mountaineer. “His stride shortened to shuffle, shuffle to dodder, dodder to step. During the same years that my grandfather was losing the ability to walk, my two children – his two first great grandchildren – were gaining it. Step lengthened to dodder, dodder to shuffle, shuffle to stride. 

Liminal. Numen. These are more than words; they are dense concepts useful when encountering mystery and the inexplicable.

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NOW AVAILABLE IN PRINT OR ONLINE WHEREVER BOOKS ARE SOLD 

IN PASSING. SCENES FROM AN UNCONVENTIONAL LIFE 

12,000 MILES OF ROAD THOUGHTS. OLD VAN, OLD MAN, RECOVERING HIPPIE, DYING CAT

A FRANKLIN MANOR CHRISTMAS 

A FRANKLIN MANOR EPIPHANY