It’s so good to sit with you again, my dear one…
Today we have something different to discuss.
This isn’t a story about a hero or a war.
Not this time.
It’s about something softer. Stranger.
Something quiet that changed everything.
I want to tell you about a piece of skin.
Not a metaphor. A real one — stretched and scraped until it could carry words across centuries.
You see, people often ask why we know so much about ancient Greece. Why this one small place — one city, really — seems to echo louder than whole empires that lasted longer, ruled farther, dreamed bigger.
Why do we still read Plato and not the laws of Carthage?
Why Sophocles, not the myths of Kush?
Why Athens?
The truth is complicated. But part of the answer is this:
They wrote.
And more importantly… they wrote on vellum.
Vellum isn’t paper. It isn’t cheap.
It’s not made from trees, but from calfskin — soaked, scraped, stretched.
Each sheet a sacrifice. Each page an offering to memory.
And when those pages found their way into a library — like the Lyceum — and were copied, and re-copied, and tucked into monasteries and scriptoria…
Well, they didn’t just last.
They survived.
That’s the difference, dear one.
Not brilliance. Not truth.
Material.
You could have the greatest idea in the world — but if it’s written on wind, it won’t reach the next generation.
So today, I want to show you how memory was made.
Not in minds… but in flesh.
It’s not a pretty story. But it’s a true one.
And like most true things — it begins in blood.
It begins with a calf, or perhaps a goat, or a sheep.
Not old. Not full-grown.
Just past birth, still soft-eyed and unknowing.
You weren’t supposed to get attached.
But I always did.
The best vellum came from the youngest skins — unscarred, unstretched by weather or age. Calves that hadn’t yet grazed, hadn’t been bitten by flies or nicked by fences.
Clean. Pale. Untouched.
And then… touched forever.
The skin was removed carefully — not for cruelty, but for craft.
This wasn’t butchery. It was preparation.
There was a reverence in it — strange, but real.
The hide would be soaked in lime water — a caustic bath that loosened hair and softened flesh.
For days it sat, cold and reeking, while the future of philosophy bubbled beneath the surface.
Then came the scraping.
With a crescent-bladed knife — a lunellum, they called it — the skin was laid across a frame and pulled taut, and a scribe or tanner scraped it smooth.
First the flesh side. Then the hair side. Over and over.
I remember the sound —
A dry rasp, like wind dragging itself across old stone.
They scraped until the skin became something else.
Not animal. Not quite artifact.
Something in between.
Then they dusted it with chalk. Rubbed it with pumice. Tightened it on the frame. Let it dry.
What came off the rack wasn’t paper.
It was… something firmer. With a tension to it. A texture.
It held shape, like it remembered being alive.
Hold a piece of vellum in your hand, dear one, and you’ll feel it —
The ghost of muscle.
The stretch of skin.
The echo of a creature that once stood blinking in the morning sun.
But now… it’s ready to carry thought.
Not yet written.
But waiting.
Once the vellum had dried and tightened,
the real work could begin.
It wasn’t a scroll yet.
It wasn’t a book.
It was still just a possibility — a body with no voice.
The sheets were cut into rectangles — carefully, by hand.
Not all the same size. Some were wide and shallow, others narrow and tall. It depended on the calf, the knife, and the purpose.
And then… the lines.
Not written yet — drawn.
Ruling lines, they called them.
Scratched lightly with a stylus or scored with a bone tool.
Not to decorate — but to guide.
Because memory, dear one… memory needs form.
Even wild thought must walk in straight lines if it wants to last.
Then came the ink.
Black made from soot.
Red made from iron.
Some scribes used gold, but that was rare. Precious.
The pen — cut from a reed, or a goose feather — dipped and drawn with exquisite slowness.
Letter by letter.
No backspace. No second draft.
Some wrote Greek. Some Latin. Some Coptic or Syriac.
Some copied philosophy. Others copied prayers. Some, both.
And when I say “copied,” I mean copied.
Every letter from the last version — a thread pulled through time.
The vellum didn’t make the words wise.
But it made them visible…
again, and again, and again.
That’s the magic.
A good thought dies on a bad surface.
But on vellum? It breathes.
It might sit for a hundred years in the corner of a monastery — ignored, forgotten — and then be found again.
I’ve watched it happen.
A dusty shelf.
A flick of a page.
And someone — a boy, a girl, a wandering monk — hears the voice of a thinker long dead… speaking clearly.
That’s not immortality.
But it’s close.
Let me tell you something hard, dear one…
Not everyone got vellum.
Not every voice was considered worth the calf.
Not every story was deemed copy-worthy.
Greek philosophers? Yes.
Christian gospels? Yes.
Roman laws, imperial decrees, lists of bishops and land holdings?
All copied.
All preserved.
But the lullabies of Thrace?
The market songs of women in Nubia?
The herbal wisdom of mothers in Anatolia?
Gone.
Because vellum was expensive.
Copyists were few.
And memory — the kind that gets written — has always had gatekeepers.
If you were a man, educated, sponsored by a school or a church…
Your words had a chance to survive.
But if you were poor, or female, or spoke in a language no scribe was trained to read?
Then your ideas had to travel another way.
Or not at all.
I don’t say this to make you sad.
I say it so you don’t mistake what survived… for all that ever was.
The tapestry of memory?
It’s full of holes.
Sometimes I hear people say, “These were the greatest thinkers,” as if history were a contest, and the winners were obvious.
But often, the winners were just… the ones with vellum.
That’s the truth of it.
We remember what could be copied.
What could be stored.
What someone — a tired, ink-smudged scribe — thought was worth passing on.
And all the rest?
Still there, maybe…
In stone.
In story.
In silence.
But not in books.
Memory isn’t just what we remember.
It’s how we remember.
And more than that — it’s what survives the remembering.
Vellum was more than a writing surface.
It was a choice.
A filter.
A kind of technology that shaped the past we think we know.
You’ve heard me speak of memory as a thread in the tapestry.
But here’s a secret I’ve kept until now:
Ink is the thread.
Vellum is the loom.
Without something to hold the words — to stretch them, anchor them, preserve them — the thread frays.
It curls inward. It vanishes.
And without institutions — schools, libraries, scriptoria — even the finest vellum curls into dust in the dark.
That’s why I speak of the Lyceum with such reverence.
Not because it was perfect.
But because it was a place where thought became tradition.
Where memory wasn’t just held — it was tended.
That’s what makes progress possible.
Not just the flash of insight — but the labor of preservation.
Not just the brilliant voice — but the one who copied it, protected it, passed it on.
We talk of great thinkers, but I remember the monks who stayed through the winter with numb fingers.
The women who taught their sons to read while the city burned.
The students who traced faded letters so future eyes could see them.
They are the architects of continuity.
They are the ones who kept the thread unbroken.
And you, dear one — you inherit that thread.
Not just by reading.
By choosing what you preserve.
What you pass forward.
What medium will carry your memory.
Because the question isn’t just:
What will you write?
The question is:
What will last?
But before I close, dear one…
let me tell you what happened last week.
Not last century.
Not in parchment and myth.
Last week.
In Hungary — atop a tall green hill — stands the abbey of Pannonhalma.
It has watched the world change for over a thousand years.
It has survived wars, invasions, the rise and fall of empires…
and now it’s under siege by something smaller than a grain of rice.
Beetles.
Tiny, persistent creatures — drawn not to words, but to glue.
Not to wisdom, but to starch.
They’ve chewed through the bindings of books older than most nations.
Some pages have been hollowed, perforated like leaves eaten by time.
A thousand years of memory… gnawed.
And so the monks and librarians — today’s scribes, still bound by the Rule of Saint Benedict — are packing the books into sealed bags.
Removing the oxygen.
Creating little worlds where no beetle can breathe.
It will take six weeks.
Then, one by one, each book will be unwrapped, inspected, cleaned, and—if needed—restored.
And still…
some damage will remain.
Now think about that.
We speak of vellum as though it’s eternal.
But even the strongest memory needs caretakers.
Even the finest calfskin is vulnerable to teeth.
This isn’t a tragedy from the past.
It’s the present.
Right now, as you listen, someone is brushing dust from a 13th-century Bible —
trying to save a line of ink that someone else, long ago, gave their life to copy.
Because they believe — still —
that the written word matters.
That culture is not replaceable.
That even in an age of pixels and servers and digital clouds…
what was written on vellum still holds weight.
So don’t think of preservation as something monks did.
Think of it as something you are now part of.
Because the beetles don’t care what century it is.
But memory does.
So now, dear one…
what will you write on?
Not just your ideas — your hopes, your questions —
but the medium you choose to carry them.
Will your words be saved in fading pixels?
In whispers?
In the margin of a book you loan but never get back?
Will they survive heat?
Time?
Beetles?
I don’t ask to frighten you.
Only to remind you: preservation is not a passive thing.
It doesn’t just happen because something is wise, or beautiful, or true.
It happens because someone decides to keep it.
Because someone, somewhere, says:
“This matters.”
That’s what vellum was —
a way of saying, with great cost and great care:
“This must not be forgotten.”
And that’s what the monks at Pannonhalma are saying now,
even as they seal their crates and pray for oxygen to do what time could not.
It’s easy to think that history is what’s already happened.
But I promise you —
history is also what you choose to carry forward.
And memory?
Memory is the act of saying:
“We are not starting from nothing.”
You are part of a long chain of preservation, dear one.
From the calf to the knife, from the pen to the beetle,
from the scribe to the server…
What thread will you keep unbroken?
What words will you protect?
Because somewhere in your life —
maybe in your drawer, maybe in your drive, maybe in the heart of someone you’ve spoken to —
there is a piece of culture that only you can save.
Choose wisely.
Choose lovingly.
And choose something that matters,
You may have noticed, dear one… there’s no sponsor today.
No cloaks, no scrollmakers, no philosophers offering limited-time discounts.
Some stories aren’t for sale.
Vellum was more than a surface. It was an offering — of time, of life, of intention.
Every page was a quiet sacrifice. Every book, a vow.
And so today, in honor of those who stretched the skin, who traced the lines, who whispered thought into flesh…
I’d rather let this story stand on its own.
It deserves quiet.
And maybe… a little reverence.
Until next time,
Much love to you.
I am Harmonia