A Year of Curiosities
It’s been a full year since I started this blog. I published 26 essays during this period, and this one is the twenty-seventh. That’s a lot of writing for a small audience, which is a fair bit different from the usual niches I occupy as an author of queer SFF. In the beginning, I wondered if the blog would become a kind of experiment in whether I wanted to do some writing for hire related to my hobbies - but through the year, I was not seeking out any such opportunities, and I’m not affiliated with anyone. I did write to Atlas Stationers to ask if they’d want to give me a personal code, but they never responded. So that was that. I think, more than anything else, I needed a place to retreat. I am very pleased with how this year went. I’m glad to have connected with cool people. I am glad to have created a quiet place to write about things which are not painful. Stationery is a form of self-care for me, an emotional touchstone in an often ruthless reality. This writing, too, is a form of self-care.
Aurorae Internazionale and Volterra, with "The World" card from Botanica, by Kevin Jay Stanton.
Many thanks to my pen friends Joe (The Gentleman Stationer), Rodolfo, Robert, Josh, and Leah who encouraged me to start this blog, and to all the people whose blogs inspired me: JD at mnmlscholar, Anthony at Ukfountainpens (no longer updated, but you can follow him on Instagram), KC at Dime Novel Raven, Dennis at A Fleeting Ripple, to name but a few. :) May your ink continue to flow.
To celebrate the milestone, I’m sharing a list of ten of my favorite essays I’ve written in the first year of curiosities. Enjoy :)
1.
Stationery Storytelling. One of the first essays I’ve written for this blog, and still one of my favorites. Story is not everything, but meanings are made through stories. Good storytelling amplifies my enjoyment of stationery.
2.
The Soft Long Story. Continuing the theme of storytelling, this is an odd essay that meanders from fountain pens to watches to books to textiles in search of an elusive feeling of timelessness. I think it’s one of the best I’ve written, and probably hardest to define.
“I don’t care if fountain pens are about to become a luxury commodity. I am here for the slower and more careful world.”
From “The Soft Long Story” - some of my books with an antique inkwell and my Visconti Homo Sapiens Bronze Age.
3.
Pen Frustration, Pen Magic. Another essay I am very fond of.
“[Collecting is] about what we need, and what we are not getting from this burning world — it’s about anxieties and beauty and self-soothing and sensory delight, it is about building your one oasis of beautiful calm focus and wanting it to support you. It’s about sanctuary. This is why many of us turn to analog. When our oasis of analog does not work like we need it to, it can feel like a betrayal.”
4.
The Gathering and the Menagerie. My two collections, side by side, with an extra helping of bears. “I often think about my collecting interests as connected through a special kind of aliveness I sense in the objects I’m drawn to.”
Menagerie friends beadbird and alabaster rabbit, with the menagerie-themed Onoto Magna Keats featuring a nightingale.
5.
Grail Feeling: Aurora Internazionale Orange. I love this pen.
The Aurora Internazionale Orange on journal, with a beadcat friend
6.
Sanctuary. This is such an important category for me, and one which is less discussed than the others. Sanctuary is the desire for a supportive environment, a cocoon, which will hold us and replenish our emotional resources when the outside is inhospitable. This is why tea and coffee (or other beverage of your choice) and stationery go so well together - they have the power to bring comfort, set a more deliberate pace, and to define an environment as safe and welcoming. This, for me, is why so many of us turned to the stationery hobby during the pandemic. I want to write more about this.
An image from "What are we looking for?"
7.
Reconnecting with my Scribo Feel A Riveder Le Stelle. Everything is a metaphor, especially pens. Especially if they don’t work as advertised. Especially if they are precious.
8.
“Fountain pens are my emotional touchstone. I write with them, and they are also my stimming tools, and they are objects of beauty and delight, and they take interchangeable inks and sometimes interchangeable nibs so they’re always at least a little bit modular; they look different side by side when I select a few and ink them, yet they are harmonious together. When I leave home, even for a short while, the five or six fountain pens in their case become my portable sanctuary, a physical manifestation of respite, endeavor, and dream.”
A currently linked lineup from "A Portable Sanctuary"
9.
The Sadness of Finishing a Notebook. I want beloved things to last.
“The notebook becomes a mirror of self, an extension, an inalienable part of the body - my body of work, my body, my EDC, my thoughts; I rely on its availability to check back and reread the important things I’ve discovered earlier this year. Separating from this insert is going to be difficult, even though I will swap in the exact same Hobonichi day-free, so things will not look different, setup-wise. But there is a particular sadness to this, as if separating from a part of myself which will be filed and available, but will no longer travel with me whenever I go.”
10.
Alabaster and Orange and No Particular Clarity. It’s ok not to have an immediate clarity about what our collecting impulses mean. Otherwise, there would be no point in writing.
Menagerie friend neko cat observing the Conid Tiger.
In the early days of the blog, I wondered if it would be possible to write a blog and not be tempted to expand my curated collection beyond my own guardrails. This did not happen - my collecting pattern is mostly the same.
Because my collection is quite small, I also worried about posting the same pens over and over. I feel that in many ways I’ve done just that, but that is just my aesthetic. I want to spend a lot of time with each pen and stationery item. Repetition is both practice and delight. I’m about to swap a new day-free insert into my beloved Orange leatherworks cover. Let’s see what the next year brings :)
Aurora 88 Volterra, New Hobonichi Day-Free insert, Orange Leatherworks cover aging beautifully, and the "World" card from the Botanica deck.