Old pocket notebook, meet new pocket notebook. For the guardian spirit, I decided on this painting of Salt-N-Pepa by Frank Morrison, from the book The Roots of Rap.
Winter guardian
My newest winter diary had gone a dozen days without a guardian spirit and then BOOM I saw this photo of Edward Gorey in one of his famous fur coats. (Speech balloons from my son’s Peanuts calendar.)
Buster
Above: a happy kitchen table scene from a few weeks ago. Below: the guardian spirit for my new diary.
Guardian spirits
Back in January, I decided that my new notebook needed a guardian spirit to watch over things. Emily Dickinson seemed right.
I felt like Emily D kept a good watch, so when I finished that notebook, I decided to continue the practice. I burned through 8 notebooks this year, so I had to pick 8 spirits…
I’d never heard of Carl Craig, but I loved this photo of him in The New Yorker, and it was the perfect size.
For the next notebook, the collage artist Hannah Höch.
Then, since summer is a hateful season to me, I went with H.W. and Daniel Plainview from There Will Be Blood.
George Strait’s hat, swiped, again, from The New Yorker.
Walt Whitman, with my 2-year-old’s scribbles over his face.
A drawing of a robot by my 4-year-old.
Finally, for my last notebook of the year, here’s Jack Lemmon from The Apartment.
Guardian spirits
I like the idea of starting new notebooks by stationing guardian spirits inside the front cover, to watch over things. For my latest notebook, I went with Emily Dickinson:
In this short Life that only lasts an hour
How much – how little – is within our power
Here’s the original, from the fantastic book, The Gorgeous Nothings: Emily Dickinson’s Envelope Poems:
