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

Scratching. Scarring. Scripting.

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 magic. The idea of a collective, a collage, of mind expressions — just go, flow, draw, and create the alphabet and code of your being.

But 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:

Just recently, one emerged (passed along by friend Stuart Balcomb) — a mystery: http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-02-experts-age.html

The Voynich Manuscript
The Voynich Manuscript, 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. (Wiki:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript)

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. Being in NYC, a chance to see Carl Gustav Jung’s Red Book at the Rubin revealed a lifetime of examination and meditation. (http://www.rmanyc.org/pages/load/156) I ponder too the work of Abbess, Hildegard Von Bingen, a medieval writer, theorist, contemplative and spiritual leader — her writings, manuscripts, visually are arrayed here: http://bit.ly/fShv0V.

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, the code, now.

t | decatur island
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THE DESIGN STRATEGY OF JOURNALS
http://bit.ly/i8LfX3