How to recognise what is worth putting down on the page
Quite a few of my readers seem a little afraid to let themselves go in a zibaldone. And I understand — it is hard not to be swayed by the endless tips on social media about Getting Things Done (GTD), or to resist the supposedly life-saving discipline of the bullet journal. But there is no harm in setting all that efficiency aside for a while. Your zibaldone is a playground for creativity, a space for collecting opportunities rather than ticking them off.
If that sounds appealing, this post is for you. It is a compilation of two moments I shared on Instagram — real examples of how I fill my zibaldone with drawings, ideas and quotes, and how much pleasure I get from doing so. And yes, I still manage to get things done in all that happy chaos!
🌙 Building a Porte de Lune: Sketching, Observing, Creating
We installed a large steel circle at the entrance of our garden. On one side, the rough mountain views; on the other, the carefully tended garden cultivated by my wife.
As a carnettiste, I like to work on location — absorbing the landscape, tracing the lines of nature, and uncovering the symbolism of a place. This Porte de Lune, as such a circular gate is known in the South of France, was inspired by the Moon card in tarot. It is one such symbol: a circular opening that marks not just a physical transition, but an invitation to slow down, to observe, and to become aware of the moments when you cross a threshold yourself.
After a little research, I also discovered similar portals in traditional Chinese gardens, mostly built in stone or woven from branches — all of them well worth a few pages in the zibaldone. If you are curious, there is a wealth of images online and on Pinterest that you can print out and paste straight into your book.
- An interesting article (in French) on the symbolism of a porte de lune in Chinese gardens
- Pictures of moon gates on Pinterest
The sketch I made is not only a study of form and light. It is also a reflection on what it means to step through such a portal — literally, but also as a metaphor for creativity, growth, or entering the unknown. The process of sketching on location, absorbing the landscape, and translating it onto the page is how I come to understand and engage with a place, which in turn feeds into the story maps I make for clients.
Stepping through our Porte de Lune, you quite literally enter another world: a lush, natural garden. It has given rise to many interesting notes in my zibaldone — about plants, trees, the moon, birds, and much more. Your own garden, however modest, can be an infinite source of material.
🚶 Desire Paths: When Anthropology Comes Knocking
Prompts are a popular way of encouraging yourself to write or draw, and there are thousands of them online. For a zibaldone, however, I would advise finding your own — otherwise you risk filling your book with passages that have nothing to do with your life or thinking. Prompts are one-time use; your pages are not.
I do not go looking for subjects to write about. They appear by themselves, surfacing during whatever I happen to be doing. Let your life guide you. Take a walk, read a book, watch a film, stumble across a blog post — something will inevitably catch your attention.
Let me give you an example.
Not long ago, I came across the phenomenon of the desire path. The Oxford Dictionary defines it as :
“an unofficial track formed when people walk the shortest or easiest way between two places, in preference to a constructed but longer or less convenient path.”
You know the kind — the worn diagonal across a grass verge that everyone takes even though the pavement goes around.
Anthropology is a frequent visitor to my pages, so I scrolled back about twenty pages in my zibaldone and found a quote by the anthropologist Tim Ingold on a seemingly unrelated subject. But the connection was there: a path is a line, drawn by human movement. That thread led me to Ingold’s book Lines: A Brief History — a fascinating read that kept my pen busy for several more pages.
Then, simply walking our driveway to the letterbox, the idea took on yet another meaning. Our path curves around a small wooded area and alongside a dry-stone wall before arriving at the garden — nothing like the straight line to the door one might expect. That small detour set me thinking, and then sketching.
I hope these short stories put you on your way to start your own zibaldone. Let me know how you’ doing!
[Previous post — My zibaldone: a journey through my reading nooks]
A note on links and references mentioned in this post: — Tim Ingold, Lines: A Brief History (2007) — My earlier post on Thinking through making
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