Alabaster and Orange and no Immediate Clarity

If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you already know that I think a lot about desire in the context of my collecting practice. I’ve recently been thinking how important desire is, how important wanting and yearning are for those of us who are tackling depression, trauma, and difficult life circumstances. Desire is the blood of life. I think desire gets a bad rep because things can easily go out of hand, and also because US culture seems to idolize puritanical, minimalist, and Spartan - while both castigating and embracing excess. I thought I was safe from either the minimalist or the maximalist paths because I am not much given to FOMO, I tend to be slow and thoughtful in my acquisitions, and I have a plan and tend to stick to it.

Journaling about the Conid on a gloomy morning.

That was before I planted my face in front of the keyboard, trying to get a Conid on a stampede sale.

Let me backtrack.

In the first six months of 2024, I bought only one pen. It was acquired with the proceeds of other pen sales, I was in a good place in terms of pen budget, and I was feeling great about my low-buy intention. There was only one issue with all this - I was getting fidgety.

I wanted another pen.

There was one pen which had been hanging out in my wishlist since 2022 - the Aurora Volterra. I kept thinking about it, I almost bought it multiple times, I was waiting for the best sale when the pen sold out everywhere and I was out of luck. I wanted that pen and I also experienced no FOMO about not getting it. It was either going to happen or not. I could scratch the itch of wanting a new pen by buying an Aurora off eBay. Or I could wait. So I waited.

I had to send this beauty back to italy - the cap developed a hairline crack :(

Well, the Conid Tiger was announced. I have never been into Conids. They are very clinical-looking, I tend not to like demonstrators, I am not sure Conids are worth the money, and I hate hype. But then the Tiger was announced, I was immediately intrigued. It’s a Gathering-looking pen, and it fits in the Menagerie as well, and it’s orange, and — well, I wanted it. I have not wanted a pen this much since I got the Internazionale, which, by the way, I had to send back to Italy for repair; and this also influenced how I feel about the state of the Gathering.

So I decided to make the Conid my second purchase of the year. I sold a bunch of pens to prepare to buy the Conid, obsessed over this pen way too much, woke up early, kept clicking when the sale went live, the website crashed, I was feeling desperate, asked my spouse for help, they tried also — and, in the end, nothing worked. I did not get it.

I hate this part of fountain pen culture. I hate extremely limited releases, I hate manufactured scarcity, I hate stampedes, I hate feeling like I need to be an Olympic-level keyboard athlete just to buy a luxury commodity, it’s everything I want not to do in my life. I made a mistake, I thought - I should have talked myself out of the stampede and redirected my wanting elsewhere, but, desire is a thing. I wanted this pen, I did not get it, and I still wanted it after I did not get it. I felt frustrated.

The Aurora Volterra restocked. So I bought the Aurora.

The Aurora Volterra 888 in an orange context

I regretted the purchase instantly - why was I buying a pen to make myself feel better about not getting another pen? I was not where I wanted to be emotionally for that purchase, I should have waited, the brain carousel was spinning full time, and when the Aurora arrived, I felt like I had some kind of ethical obligation not to like it; this is hard to explain. I inked it with MB Origin Green. It’s a semitranslucent pen, and that’s a very weird feature, and at that point I was just talking myself out of liking a pen I wanted for two years just because I did not get the Tiger.

Aurora Volterra with Menagerie friend the alabaster rabbit.

The life of emotions is strange sometimes. The twists and turns of the pen hobby for me are tightly linked to my trauma healing journey, which involves a lot of private journaling with my favorite fountain pens. I did not want to like the new Aurora - even though I bought it for all the right reasons and after a long wait, the timing was off - I was still not over the whole tiger situation. Life rarely follows predictable scripts. I thought I made a mistake, but I love the Volterra. It’s beautiful, perfectly proportioned; the semitransparent pale material is supposed to evoke alabaster, and it absolutely does. The resin also has these subtle flashes of iridescent green. The F nib, which is made by Aurora in-house, writes perfectly. I took the Volterra with me on a recent trip to Boston, and it was a delight to use. I appreciated having my emotional support stationery on a trip that turned out to be difficult and anxiety-inducing, and felt grateful to have the Aurora and the spirit of the Gathering with me.

While I was traveling, a pen friend contacted me about the Conid they snagged at the stampede event - they asked if I still wanted it. I very much still wanted it, and when I got home from Boston, the Tiger was waiting for me at home. I’ll write more about the Conid in a separate post - I am still getting used to it.

Conid Wild Tiger with a Menagerie friend neko cat. The vintage orange cat is completely hand-stitched and hand-decorated, and I got it at Artifacts in Iowa City. Margaret had the neko sitting on the counter for many months until I finally asked about him, and she let me have him for four dollars. He’s been with me for almost a decade at this point. And we miss you, Margaret <3

I don’t regret getting the Volterra, and I do not regret the Conid, but I got two major pens in a short amount of time. Even though I moved things around and budgeted, the rapidity of this situation does not sit well with me. What did I learn from all this? Honestly, I’m not sure, and that too is something I want to sit with. In the first few days of my Conid ownership, I thought that I needed to institute a no-buy. But I checked my numbers, sold a few more things I had wanted to sell, and reviewed my stationery intentions - the numbers work (this year, I mostly recycled collection pieces to bring in new ones). There is no objective reason to punish myself with a no-buy - I have not actually gone overboard, I just like my acquisitions to be a lot more spaced out. So maybe that’s the conclusion - that after two rapid purchases I naturally feel the need to slow down. Or maybe the conclusion is that I am not the person for rapid-fire sales. They just don’t work for my brain and my heart. But where the rapid clicking failed me, camaraderie and community came through - this is often the case, in things big and small. Or maybe the conclusion is that the Gathering without my Internazionale is sad and I had to have something orange. Or maybe I traveled too much this year (definitely true) while still recovering from Long Covid and not feeling great about being in crowds, and I needed more support from my stationery.

It’s ok not to have an immediate clarity about what our collecting impulses mean. This is a hard takeaway, perhaps the hardest of them all, because I love analysis and do often have clarity; but now I’m letting this whole thing percolate now as I enjoy Gathering friends old and new, and let myself breathe.

Class of 2024 so far, bottom to top in order of acquisition: Scribo Maddalena, Aurora Volterra, Conid Wild Tiger. My intention for 2024 is to buy 6 fountain pens or less.