Curious as to what you think takes up more of your time. Simply pondering, sitting around and thinking/daydreaming? Or do you have a tool, book, notepad, visual media actively being used more often?
When I was a child, before I could read or write, I had a kinship with a journal notebook. I was 5 and I had purchased it at a souvenir shop in a dusty Florida beach town, shells adorned the cover. I admit, I could write a little. I wrote “one day me and my…” I had to ask my mother, who was making tacos, how to write family. In my head, a melody started to form, a little song! “One - day - me and my family - went - on - a really long vacation.” I was right there in my head and my tongue, I started singing it. “Mom, how to I write this,” (then I sang it again).
“Well, you can’t really write a song other then a sentence..” She explains, (what’s she going to say?! Start expounding on middle C?) That wasn’t good enough for me, somehow a song would be different. I protested! I still needed help. How do you spell really? How do you spell long? No like a song! How do you spell…..I was kicked out of the kitchen - honestly I was being a little bitch about it, but I wanted to remember this song! I drew a long line to represent “long”, and then I drew a wood paneled station wagon with luggage on top to represent “vacation.” But it still wasn’t a song and I wept, no one would help me! I went to the bedroom and cried into the bed until the tacos were ready and hanger subsided.
This habit continued through every stage of life. There were years I picked up no book, everything that went through my head in my free time were memories, insights and abstractions and creation of idea to paper.
What’s the consensus in r/polymath? Do you journal?
Writing is a wonderful and powerful tool. This brings me to another topic, the metaphysical. In my studies, I’ve never embraced or shunned the ideas of unknown forces, mysticism and magic. I have never sought the practice of any associated ideas. However, I have had the sense that with as much energy that physically goes into a notebook: countless hours of thoughts and focused emotions, heartbeats, with my skin enmeshed in page fibers, eyelashes in the crevice - my physical being in this book. I could start to see how someone with ‘witchy’ intentions could develop and feel compelled to believe in the power of a grimoire.
Seems like some of the polymaths of history not only journaled, but studied the divine arts, whether for practical reasons or just one of the bucket list items their minds needed to get to.
r/polymath surely has something to say.
key topics: journaling, preferred best practices for note taking, polymaths of history and their practices of note taking, their interests into the divine arts, how modern world views divine arts/metaphysical teachings/phenomena
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