“Just write a mission statement,” said Paul. Or words to that effect—something that would clue in a visitor to what my (our) website is going to be about. Something that would explain, or maybe even convince, people that it’s better to buy a handmade book than a commercial book.
I nodded my head sagely, as best I could, and didn’t tell him the truth: I never read mission statements, I remove mission statements from any document I have the pleasure of editing, and I will do anything short of lying in the bus lane to prevent you from writing a mission statement.
I hate mission statements.
I hate them because they suggest that I am acting clearly and purposefully. They suggest that I have a mission, and I should have, I agree. It would be great to have a mission, or to pretend that the mission that I acquired is somehow the real mission.
I stumbled into bookbinding just as I stumbled into writing. Officially, I am a bookbinder because of Tyler (my nephew), who got it into his head to get married. This meant that I had to buy a gift long either on expense or sentiment.
Surprise—I chose sentiment!
So I found myself the perfect thing: a family history my grandmother had written at the end of her life. It needed updating, surely, which meant that a respectable 40- page document became 120 pages. Then I had to hand it in (as it were) and somehow a three-ring binder didn’t feel appropriate. So I bought some William Morris paper and decided to make a book.
Anyone can make a book.
This story is true, and it’s true that anyone can make a book.
It’s true as well that making the book started me off on a long journey into bookbinding. I watched hours of bookbinding videos on YouTube every day for several years. I made journals every chance I got, and once considered bringing sections of paper to the beach and binding them there.
The book I made for Tyler (which I earnestly hope got tossed in the move from Brooklyn to New Jersey) was bound using the Japanese stab binding. This meant that I attacked the text block (the book without the covers) with an electric drill. I drilled four holes and laced strong thread through and between them.
It’s utterly simple and if you are Japanese (or even just coordinated), it can look beautiful. I glanced at the work I had done, and decided that the William Morris paper was definitely the way to go. Here’s what the book didn’t look like:
The wedding was a great success, the marriage has been even better. My part was done, and there was no reason ever to bind a book again. But each morning in that dark period when the Covid-19 pandemic was just ending and my mourning the suicide of a dear friend was still enduring, I got up and made a journal.
I didn’t understand what I was doing until I saw a Netflix series about the tsunami that hit Japan and knocked out the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Several men were “missing” for several weeks, and each day the widow (sorry for the spoiler) got up and made origami cranes. She acknowledged other people, she ate to keep alive, she rested when she could no longer go on.
I sat in my living room and watched her do it. I knew that the actor playing the widow was in real life a perfectly normal woman. It was only I (making terrible journals that slowly got better) and the crazy Japanese woman on the Netflix series who made cranes who were nuts. We had woken up each morning with an impossible life to get through for the day. She made cranes; I made journals.
Mission—stay alive (and sober, Marc?) for another day.
I couldn’t tell anyone what I was really doing, of course, which is why it helped that Tyler does exist and did get married. But when people drifted by and gaped at what I was doing in the Poet’s Passage, I told them the incidental truth, not the working truth.
I had stopped mourning my friend / son and had gone on to mourning my marriage and my country. I had to get Donald Trump out of my head and back where he belongs, which is NOT the oval office. The disease had shifted, the cure remained the same.
So my mission is to get through the day, honestly.
That said, I’m ready to talk about books.
See you tomorrow!
