A Personal Notebook · Est. 1974
Dispatches on books, slow living, and the art of paying attention.
July 9, 1974
There is a particular kind of attention that only a pen and a cheap notebook can demand of you. Notes on a habit I picked up from old writers and never quite put down.
I gave up the optimized morning routine two years ago and replaced it with coffee, a window, and silence. It has been the most productive decision I have ever made.
I started baking bread because I was lonely. I kept baking it because it was the only thing in my week that refused to be hurried.
I spent a winter in a town of nine hundred people, and the post office was the only building that was always open. Notes on what we lost when we stopped writing letters.
“The slow web is not a place. It is a habit of attention, practiced by people who have decided that the speed at which they live is more important than the speed at which the world moves.”
— from the masthead, July 1974
Writing · 5 min
Garden · 4 min
There is a chair by the window, and the coffee is on. The notebook is open. Stay as long as you like.