Collecting as a contemplative practice
In my new novella The Yoke of Stars, which is slated to be published in July 2024, a young protagonist is gifted a pen by her lover:
He gave her so many gifts – clothes and jewelry unrivaled. He gave her a chest of treasure from ancient treaties – gifts given to his people by Ranra herself when she was crossing the sea. Then there was the pen – a splendid mechanical pen with a hidden ink chamber and a long, graceful nib. It had a body like a feather made of tiny diamonds. The heart of the feather was a ruby that glittered every time Ulín moved to write something down, distracting her with its fractured light.
Long before I hosted a gathering of pens in my home, long before I even wrote fiction, I thought about Ulín and her pens. She was always partial to them, but that first pen was a no-go. When I think about that pen, I think about Montblanc High Artistry. It is likely that you will never see such a pen in person, let alone touch it, unless you are a prince of some kind, or visiting a museum. It’s not very useful for field notes.
Yet, the yearning for a singular beauty remains. Perhaps not for diamonds - but for that odd, indescribable allure of an object which is, for all intents and purposes, superfluous - inconvenient, fragile, often expensive, without a big justifiable function. There is that feeling of joy that moves us beyond acquisition, towards coexisting with rare and curious objects. It is a contemplative practice that encourages us to slow down, to look deeper, to pay attention.
I published my first stationery blog post over at Joe’s The Gentleman Stationer. I hoped it would get the blogging urge out of my system. There’s no reason for me to write a stationery blog, or any blog, when I need to get completed manuscripts to my agent, develop research manuscripts, post on Patreon, do more translation work, etc, etc. But I’ve been really struggling with my health this year, and having trouble with many kinds of writing. The world is on fire, and so much of it affects me directly. I need something restful. This feels restful, for now.
For The Gentleman Stationer, I wrote:
The colors and textures of pens in my tray reassure me that beauty persists beyond the devastation of wars and pandemics, beyond market pressures and too-rapid technological advances. Fiddling with my pens reminds me that history is a human story. We value not just what’s the latest and fastest and flashiest; my pens promise and deliver a contemplative world.
I am, generally speaking, a fast-paced person. On any day I teach classes, write any number of things, make progress on my projects, attend meetings, care for my family and my house, support my students and colleagues… the list goes on. But there are parts of me which are slow. These parts of me know that each exhale is unlike any other exhale, that each raindrop leads back to the cloud, that every familiar sight was once new and can be made new again. I want things to recur so I can study them deeper, be present, really be. Contemplation is the art of slowing time.
I often wonder what I have to contribute to the stationery community, since I am not, strictly speaking, an ardent acquirer of pens. New pen days are rare, and maybe with time they will be rarer still. That’s my goal, at least; I keep my pen gathering small on purpose. I want a long story with my pens. I am also not much of a reviewer - my focus is not on “product,” but on something altogether more nebulous. So if you read this blog, you might see the same the same pens, over and over. Or I might get completely derailed - who knows?
Let’s see what happens.