If You Forget Me by Pablo Neruda

I love poetry. I've always have. In high school, I liked Christina Georgina Rosetti, and later in college, I devoured Sylvia Plath. A few years back, I read about the Italian film 'Il Postino', a fictional story about real-life poet Pablo Neruda. I was unlucky in my search for a copy to watch, so I consoled myself with the incomplete sountrack I received from a friend. Aside from the film's score, the soundtrack also includes Pablo Neruda's poems being recited by various artists including Madonna, who recited this lovely poem.

I've said that I'm new into calligraphy, and Chancery is the only form I could do now. I rendered the poem using four cursive italic calligraphy pens, inked with four different inks on a Rhodia Metallic Reverse notebook. I did this at 2 in the morning last Saturday, to loosen up after reviewing for my exam later that morning on Cross-Cultural Communication.

First page, photo above. For the title and second paragraph, I used my Sheaffer NoNonsense pen with a fine italic nib filled with Diamine Burnt Sienna. The first paragraph was written using a Lamy Vista with a 1.5mm italic nib, inked with J. Herbin Rouille d'Ancre.

Second, page, photo above. I used a Lamy Joy with a 1.9mm italic nib inked with Diamine Chocolate for the first paragraph, and a Rotring Art Pen with a 1.5mm italic nib inked with J. Herbin Lierre Sauvage. Love these colors!

Below are photos of the last paragraphs of both pages. These are very poignant words. And though they may come across as words directed towards someone's lover, they are actually Neruda's expression of love for his country, Chile.

Inks behave differently in different pens on different paper stocks. If Diamine Burnt Sienna is on any of my Parkers, it writes very pale brown strokes. On the Sheaffer NN, it's marvelous! The classy, lovely rust-brown color is amazing! It has excellent shading, too. This paragraph reminds me a lot of Alanis Morissette's You Oughta Know.

This green is J. Herbin Lierre Sauvage, the ink I got from Exaclair's/Quo Vadis' Saint Patrick's Giveaway. I am not a fan of green inks, but I love this one! Excellent shading, excellent flow, great color!

The J. Herbin inks used in this review are courtesy of Karen Doherty, Marketing VP of Exaclair; while the Rhodia Metallic Reverse notebook is from the FPN-P May pen meet raffle. The Diamine Burnt Sienna and all the pens used belong to The Archer.

Notebook Review: Monologue Platinum Notebook

With this post, I am officially back to blogging.

I received a small box of notebooks from Grandluxe early this year. From the four notebooks I received, this silver notebook caught my fancy. Among the leather- and damask-covered notebooks, I liked this one more than the others because of the metallic look and feel of its polyurethane (PU) cover.

The Monologue Platinum A6 notebook I received from Grandluxe of Singapore measures 5 7/8 × 4 1/8 inches, almost the same size as a large Moleskine notebook. A smooth, wide groove on the rightmost part of the cover bears the notebook's matching elastic band.

The Platinum notebook allows for its owner's personalization/customization because immediately after the notebook's inside flyleaf are the following pages:

Personal Notes

Address

Website and Blog

The white, 80gsm, acid-free paper used for this notebook is ruled with clear, gray lines, with different margin settings on all four sides. The top margin is more than an inch wide, the left and bottom margins almost half an inch, and the right margin has a quarter of an inch. The paper is smooth, and has a lovely 'new paper' scent to it. The only thing I do not like about the notebook's pages is the page corners - they're not rounded.

But I forgot the page corners when I saw the notebook's edge: the pages are silver gilded! Cool!

I did this cover's torture test once to my Quo Vadis Habana notebook, and though I cringe at the thought and sight of it, this test is actually very helpful. It lets me know how a notebook's leather will wear off through time. This is important to me because the spine of my first Moleskine was already falling off and I was not even half into using it. I hope that the Platinum's thicker PU cover will last longer.

The Platinum notebook has a back pocket, too, like most of my notebooks. Though it's a functional feature to some, I do not use the back pockets of my notebooks to store anything at all. For the simple reason that whatever is inside the pocket creates a bulge that gets in the way of my writing on the paper on top of it. 

The Monologue and Platinum icons are etched in the lower portion of the notebook's back cover. Charming.

And now for the ink tests on the Monologue Platinum notebook.

I wrote on the Monologue Platinum notebook using different nib and ink combinations. On this page, feathering is seen on the first line where I used a Lamy Joy 1.5 italic inked with Camel Scarlet Red. Most of the inks tested showed medium to excessive feathering. And this broke my heart for I really wanted to use this notebook for journalling. As it is, the paper could not hold ink even from the finest in this lot, my Platinum Preppy.

This is the back side of the ink test page. Grandluxe paper is clearly not meant for fountain pen writing.

Lastly, this is the page after the ink test page. The inks just bled too much on this paper.

Finally, would I keep this notebook? Yes. But I will have to think of a better use for it. I love to write on my journal/diary using my fountain pens and that will be a problem because the Monologue Platinum paper cannot hold the inks. I can use this elegant looking notebook for note-taking, but then again, I'd have to find a pen with an extra fine nib and fill it with a very dry ink. And so the search starts now. :)

Grandluxe is a Singapore-owned company founded in 1945, offering high quality and trendy diary/planners, organisers, calendars, journals, leather accessories and stationery products. The company supplies to major bookstores and retailers in more than 30 countries in five continents. Here in Manila, I've seen Grandluxe notebooks in Glorietta 3's Bibliarch, in Makati.

The Monologue Platinum notebook used in this review is courtesy of Grandluxe of Singapore.