Detail Diary, Vol #1

An experiment and an invitation

I want to tell you about something. A few weeks ago I had a little lightbulb-thunderbolt moment that got me so excited I thought about it all day. It started with my recent water-testing of Substack Notes. Well, really, it started with my lapsed practice of writing down sensory details every day, first during the early days of pandemic lockdowns and on and off since then. And that started with my lifelong delight in catching moments like drifting leaves from the air and turning them into words, which started as early as—but let's not get carried away. (As Emperor Kuzco would say, What's with the chimp and the bug, can we get back to—)

The thunderbolt-lightbulb: I decided to catch and craft a little detail from my world every day and post it on Substack Notes. It would be a series. I would call it (after rejecting all the suggestions by ChatGPT) Detail Diary.

With apologies to Kuzco, I'll step back again: what is/are Substack Notes? If you get this newsletter via email and have never ventured into the web or app version of Substack, you may not know that there's a whole digital commons out there under the banner of Substack. There's a constellated community of writers and readers who assemble not only around the comments sections of newsletters like this one, but also on Notes, which is kind of like a more enlightened reincarnation of Twitter (such as it was) for fans of long-form writing. The idea of Notes is to step back from the long-form itself and post whatever whims, short thoughts, other people's pieces, and discussion questions you want to connect with people over—and meanwhile discover new things to read.

At the start of this story, with Notes being both a relatively new platform and one that I'm new to, I was feeling new-kid-at-playground vibes. I was trying to think of a way to play and not worry about who was watching. Short-form, short-form, hmm...and then I remembered my lapsed note-taking of leaves and breezes and birds. Perfect for Notes. Even if no one noticed them, I would enjoy having an incentive to make them again. And maybe lay a bit of a bread crumb trail for whoever eventually found them (i.e., in my Notes archive).

Here are the first two Detail Diary entries:

(The second one ends “they coil perfectly as air.” And cucurbit refers to the cucumber family.
NB: You can click on any of the Notes in this post to see the original on the website. Some have more photos than are shown here. )

There are two parts to the joy of these notes. First is looking for the details. During my bike commute along the river or while gazing out the window or whenever, I'm not only taking in the general pleasure of light mingling with leaves and mist on the mountains; I'm also looking for details with character, that light up something specific in my brain. Maybe they tell a little story, or are delightfully odd, or surprisingly juxtaposed, or herald a change in the season or hour. Maybe they're just exceptionally beatiful to me in that moment. In any case, these are details that entice me to look or listen or smell more closely, to reinterpret, to become more enmeshed in what's going on. I know when I've found one. And there is always something.

Second is the molding of these encounters into words. This is storytelling, drawing out what made that moment's character and finding the most interesting or whimsical or resonant way to say it. These are facts, but also creations. The words alchemize with the lived experience. And that, if you didn't already suspect it, is poetry. In spirit, these are haiku. Not all my Detail Diary posts have delved as many layers as a more considered poem might, and some of them have more fun with sparkle than with economy or depth. But when I sit down to write poetry, this is essentially my process for forming poems from little kernels of encounters with the world.

I'm not sure if one half of the experience is more important for me than the other (I suspect not), but it's undeniable that the writing facilitates the noticing, and of course the writing wouldn't happen without the noticing. The photos tend to be afterthoughts, but they're part of the framing and the remembering too. I think a photographer has a similar practice to a poet.

In any case, I invite you to try making your own Detail Diary. Maybe you don't already consider yourself a poet, but there’s no need to worry about the words—just use them as a way to channel your will to look, to make a habit of it. And maybe have some fun with the alchemy step too.

I relished this kind of note-taking just as much when it was in my own private notebook. But there is something about letting others in on the magic, having someone to show and tell to. I've been enjoying this so much that I'm going to keep posting my Detail Diary as long as I feel like it. I decided to post screenshots on Instagram Stories, too, because when it comes down to it, I do want to share them with my friends there, and my community on the Substack app is still in its infancy. So take this as an invitation, too, to take a gander at Substack Notes here. There's a wealth of food for thought of all varieties there, and some delightful people to chat with, and of course, my Detail Diary.

Here are a few more of my Detail Diary entries so far, and you can peruse the rest and keep up with future Details in my Notes here.