because there is something so much more tactile about using a pencil, instead of this machine I use, which is always at some remove;

because for me, it suggests that we play around with ideas that are never final, always changing;

because I’m planning on spending some time in the British Library looking at fourteenth-century manuscripts, if they’ll let me, and in there, you can write in pencil only;

because the words are a line in a poem I wrote about sensuality, and some of the ideas ring true for travel as well, I think:

… if you take a notebook

write in pencil only

a word here a sketch there

brief maps of sensation

collect only a memento or two

shards to rest quiet on the shelf

waiting to be handled     give up their dust

restore you to that land.

Better still             close your eyes go blind

gather memory in skin …