From the Sisterhood of the Silver Circle

KEEPING SABBATH IN A TRAVELING JOURNAL

The idea for our traveling journal came from the movie “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants”. I fell in love with the idea of an item that traveled among a group of close friends who were to be separated over the summer. I had recently been separated from my friends forever by moving from New York to Georgia. But I knew I would never find a magic pair of pants, so I had to come up with something else. I shared my idea with some friends and we came up with the journal idea (the original Sisterhood wrote all over their magic pants) pretty quickly. We wanted something to wear, an amulet of some sort, while we wrote in our journal. One of our members was searching through a handful of change while paying for something and noticed one coin shining brighter than the rest. It turned out to be a 1964 silver dime. It occurred to her this could figure in our journal amulet. Remarkably, she was able to find four more, all of them from the 1960’s when they stopped making dimes out of silver. After doing some research, we learned that silver dimes were thought to contain magic properties. We commissioned an extremely talented and ultra-creative mutual friend to fashion an amulet for us, which she did out of suede and beads. We named the amulet “Luna Star” and it gave us the name for our group, “Sisterhood of the Silver Circle.” We bought a special pen, a copper-hued Monteverde Invincia and we named it “Rose Heart.” Once we had all the pieces of our circle together, we met in New Hope Pennsylvania by the banks of the Delaware River and consecrated all our items in a ritual for the purpose of keeping the journal moving among us. We took oaths to always write the truth in the journal and to honor our commitment. Then, of course, we went to eat.

During the period that I have the journal, which we also call “the precious”, it can be difficult to make space in my life to sit down and write. But having it keep coming around forces me to create that time. We have come to understand the act of Sabbath keeping as going to church. But at its most fundamental, it is making time for oneself, giving oneself a break from the constant grind of work. Not just one’s job, but all work, and making time for what one considers holy. My friends are sacred to me and leaving them was gut-wrenching. I keep Sabbath and reconnect with them by reading their entries and adding my own. We are onto our second journal and in them we have shared stories of leaving husbands, finding new lovers, seeing our parents age and thinking of death. We have documented wonderful and painful events of childhood. We have bid farewell to loved ones who have passed and have rhapsodized over the coming of the seasons. We have revealed our own actions that have caused us shame. In them we have photos, commuter rail ticket stubs and some beautiful artwork and poetry. Every time we sit down, slip Luna Star over our necks and pick up Rose Heart, we imagine those in the future reading our words. In this way, we keep Sabbath.

Margie Jacobs

NOTES ON THE PHOTOS:
#1: Shows the current journal on the left which is sporting some collage art work by member

Cyan Owl; the pen, “Rose Heart”; the amulet “Luna Star” and the box on the right is a wooden cigar box that has also been decorated by more collage art work by member Cyan Owl.
#2: The amulet by itself.
#3: The pen by itself.

On The Art of the Hand Written Letter

Today as I was out and about, I passed a Barnes and Noble bookstore. In the window was a copy of the book, The Letters of Noel Coward. This brought a smile to my face. Not because I'm a fan of Noel Coward, but because here was an an individual who, in addition to his music and plays, left behind a legacy in letters. And I'm sure his letters makes for interesting reading or else no one would have bother to collect them in a single volume. How many of us will leave such a legacy behind?

In a previous post I mentioned the difficulty that contemporary biographers are having in amassing information about their subjects. Since the nineties, and perhaps even before, people no longer communicate by hand written letters. The Internet has forever changed how we communicate with one another. Now I do love the possibilities that the Internet offers in this age of high speed communication. Without the Internet this blog could not exist. Yet, still I find the need and the desire to write the old fashion way, by hand. After all, more than anything, people who collect fountain pens love to use them - they enjoy writing.

Along with the decline of hand written correspondence so too has died the art of keeping a journal or diary. Or as my friend Sandy expresses it, "the art of memoir." There was a time when many young women of my generation had a secret diary, filled with their thoughts about life and about the cute boy who sat next to them in Science class. Travelers, once upon a time, kept journals of their sojourns abroad, filled with their impressions of the Eiffel Tower or The Great Wall of China. The 19th century explorer, Sir Richard F. Burton, wrote a wonderful travelogue entitled, Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah [sic] & Mecca. Burton traveled through Arabia disguised as a wandering Dervish and visited all of the Holy shrines sacred to Muslims and participated in all of the rituals associated with the Hajj. He was one of the few, if not the first, Westerner to do so. His record of his travels throughout the Arabian Peninsula is a gripping narrative of a perilous journey. One could say that Burton's travelogue serves as a prequel to that of T.E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom, which recounts his experiences in Arabia during the First World War. There is also the personal adventure of Sir Henry Morton Stanley who spent years traveling throughout Central Africa, most notably in his quest to find David Livingstone, "Doctor Livingstone, I presume?"

The idea is that, letters and journals affords us the opportunity to experience the lives of others and to see the world through their eyes. These writings amuse and entertain, inform and educate. They allow us to connect with those core feelings that we all share with each other. And they inspire us to take journeys of our own either outward or inward. To write about our travels, experiences and observations is to mesh ourselves into the warp and weft of the fabric of humanity.


Have Pen, Will Write

Jake