Talitha Kalago is an author with a deep love of the horror genre. She lives on the Sunshine Coast, surrounded by tanks of snakes and freshwater shrimp. Talitha loves entomology, rock climbing, reading, web design, photography and video gaming, and is found online at both her website, Traditional Evolution, and her blog.
As might be expected from such a damned cool sort of person, her Precious Thing is both gorgeous, and very, very cool.
Precious Things: Talitha Kalago
When I was sixteen, in 2001, I went to the Southbank evening markets. I was up in QLD alone on holiday and I was actually having a really shitty time. At one of the stalls, I saw a leather-bound notebook holder with a quill etched into it. I brought it for myself, I think it cost about $25. I'd been writing in note books I carried around since I was about six years old. However this was designed to have notebooks slotted inside, so they could be replaced as they were filled. it also has a loop for a pen and another slot, which I keep my kindle in.
I don't think it has left my side since the day I brought it. It sits beside me wherever I am, it goes in my handbag when I leave the house and it rests on my beside table when I sleep. I have filled dozens of notebooks and probably written over 200, 000 words in it. It may be the most treasured possession I own. I don't know what I would do if I lost it.
It's not a book by someone else, obviously. So I didn't learn from someone else's wisdom and I wasn't moved by someone else's words. However most of the books I have written started as ideas and concepts I planned out within it. I definitely learned who I was, through the words I wrote. Everything from love letters, poems, goals, plans, daydreams, snippets of dialogue, ideas, dreams and notes taken during church services, when the pastor really moved me or said something special.
No single notebook could contain all that, no pen could last so long, but the notebook cover protected it all, housed it. I know every ridge and line and stain of the leather. The smell of it. The feel of it. It's almost an extension of me.
It is, by far, my most precious literary treasure.
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