The Red Book was with me through a lot of things: heartaches and confusion, artistic revolutions and political ambitions. We’ve been through a lot, and last week saw The Red Book completely filled up.

In celebration of #ArtFairPH, and also in memory of this journal, here’s a post to commemorate all the best (or at least publicly acceptable) works I’ve written and drawn in The Red Book. Some of them have been featured in this blog, and you can browse through them in this tag. Most of them haven’t.

And to explain: The Red Book was inspired by Bilbo’s Red Book of Westmarch, and not the similarly-named work by Carl Jung. That would be weird.

The Red Book was preceded by dumpsite 99.

Welcome x

The journal notebook is a Moleskine Limited Edition “The Hobbit” large notebook (13×21 cm) with plain pages (buy them here). They were a gift to me from my brother though technically he just gave me a gift certificate.

I don’t think I’ve ever expressed my love for Tolkien’s genre-defining novels before. Independent of any harms it did to the genre after (influencing generations of white fantasy), The Lord of the Rings trilogy was one of the series I was sure my father read and liked. My mom even bought my dad the Twin Towers right around 2001 or 2002.

Poetry and Quotes x

Reminders from my favorite authors and artists: e.e. cummings, Jose Corazon de Jesus, W. E. Henley, Charles Bukowski, Dali, Harry Guest, Anonymous.

Original Works x

Which can range from half-assed poetry to equally half-assed art. The potato doodles are especially compelling.

And signs of life and productivity x

I try my best to live and not forget.

This is, as the post title suggested, merely an archiving. I feel like the words in this journal deserved to be shared more (especially all of my then-favorite poems), but we don’t have the time. Nor do I have the will.

But thank you to the world at large for giving me inspiration, and to Moleskine for creating such wonderful and lovable products.