More Adventures in Pen Buying (and praying for a pulse)

I recently made an excursion to the Brentwood Stationers, a much-heralded mom-and-pop store in the center of hoity-toity Brentwood. Back in April, I went to the Piedmont Stationers in Oakland and apparently the owner of that store used to work for the owners of the Brentwood store back in "the day."

They have a huge collection of filofax stuff, which I quite liked looking at. And I did see some pens by people I've never heard of before. Like a Xenon Gel, a silver barrel pen with a black 7mm needle tip, ergonomic little cushion for your fingers, and smooth writing. For like $3.99, I believe. I also got one with an opaque turquoise barrel. I also bought a purple Pilot Razor Point pen - I just love porous point pens, but for every pen there is a matching piece of paper, and I can never find the right paper for porous points. On smooth paper they run. On scratchy paper, they scratch too much. So it's a continual quest for me to try to find the right notebook to write in with my lovely porous point pens. I also bought two notebooks - a moleskin one for $17.95 (they're cheaper at Borders, but I can't bring myself to give Borders that much money for blank paper. I give them enough money for paper with words on it already).

So the selection was ok. They didn't have the best collection of pens (they didn't sell my favorite Y&C gel pens, for example) but I'd chalk that up to the fact that, according to the staff, a store called Flax, described as 'pen heaven' is close by, so I'll have to make another trip to check that out soon. And their notebook selection was just ok. Not great. But it's not Office Depot, so I wouldn't expect it to be that great.

The thing I noticed, though, was how it seemed that everyone was really uninspired. They were friendly enough, but they just didn't seem to be passionate about stationary. I go to stores like that so I can be a stationary geek and discuss the virtues of pilot pens over pentel ones. Or the binding of a notebook. Or whether narrow rule is better than wide. I mean, if you can't get passionate about stationary in a place like that, where on earth CAN you? Most non-chain store employees are totally into their product - they'd go work at a chain or something if they didn't care that much. So I was expecting a low-level buzz about new shipments of planner pages that were arriving the next day, or whether all gel pens only last about 30 pages and then you're done. But it wasn't there. There was a nice breeze coming from the back door. Cue image of ghost-town sounds like tumbleweeds blowing across a deserted road. I did overhear their end of a phone conversation where a potential customer wanted something that was going to be nearly impossible for them to order, so they told them to go to a ...gasp ...bookstore.

Now I don't know - for all I know they were asking for a miniature replica of the Taj Mahal. And maybe they were having a crappy day and weren't really up for my weirdly upbeat chitter-chatter about how much I love stores like theirs and how I have this blog, and they should check it out. But when I told them I wrote about pens and had a blog (that actual real people read) they just looked at me like I had arrived from Mars. Maybe they don't know what blogs are because they're so into the physical stuff. I don't know. I'm trying not to judge them too harshly, but really, they were so unenthusiastic. It was like they had no idea why I would talk to them about pens at all. I kept hoping so much that a pulse would appear, but none did.

Which is a bummer. I spent $64 there. I really wanted to like them and have it be my new favorite stationary store and take monthly road trips into sidewalk-cafe-celebrity-dog-walker central to stock up on pens.

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So on the drive home, I was thinking about how anyone can be unenthusiastic about pens and paper. I mean, ideas become real when people write them down. Symphonies happen because someone wrote them down. They just lived in Beethoven's head until he wrote them down so we can all hear them. A bunch of guys sat in Philadelphia in 1776 and talked a good game, but it wasn't until they wrote it down that it became Independence. It's magic, the power that paper and ink have. How can you not completely get goosebumps being around all that power all the time?

It's been a while since I blogged about pens. That's because it's been a while since I thought about pens very much. It's the whole “owning a house” thing. Other stuff, like installing a double-sided wall heater, seems to take precedence. Call it crazy, but there you go.

The other day, though, I had a wonderful pen conversation with an airport security woman at the Ontario airport (ontario california, not canada). Apparently my bag was deemed suspicious during the x-ray security fun, and they had to go through my bag by hand. It was the pens that set it off. I guess through an xray machine, a bag of pens can resemble a weapon, and so they had to check it out.

So the lady was going through my bag, and opening and closing little compartments, and then she found the pen case culprit. We started talking about pens, and I told her that I loved pens, and was completely addicted to them, and we agreed that pens were fun. She started looking at me funny, though, when I explained that the pouch she was holding in her latex-gloved hand held those pens which were my security-blanket; the most important pens that I need to have with me when I travel because they are comforting. I explained that I knew where each one came from, why I had bought it, how much it was; and that looking at them reminded me of whatever happy time it was when I had bought said pen.

It made me think of photos. We carry photos of people in our wallets to remind us of those people. We aren't actually carrying the people themselves, but something that represents them because it helps us picture them. I'm not the most visual person and images don't really stick in my head very much (the other day I realized that I could not, for the life of me, remember what kind of closets we had in the apartment we were in for 2 years and just left in November).

So I don't really remember, nor, to be blunt, do I really care about looking at photos of loved ones for security. What I do remember, and care about, though, are the feelings I get when I'm somewhere, or with someone. And often those feelings are things I write about with pens I've bought in special places. Often just by holding the pen in my hand, or writing my name with the pen, I can bring back all the memories and emotions of a special time.

For example, on September 11, 2001, I was living in London and over my lunch break I walked down Carnaby Street, past the Lush cosmetics store and I got a sandwich at Boots. I also went to Muji, a great Japanese store, and bought three notebooks, a few gel pens, and some markers, all of which they put in a cute little paper muji bag with sturdy folded paper handles. I remember walking back to my office – it was a glorious day and the sun was making one of its last stands of the summer, and I thought about eating outside in Golden Square, behind my office.

But I decided to go back in and catch up on some work because all morning long I'd been goofing off on email with my friends Nick and Paul about tv, gossip, music, and general goofing-off stuff. I thought I should be responsible and go back inside and finish work, and then perhaps I'd leave early and walk most of the way home.

When I got to my computer, there was an email from Nick to Paul and I telling us to look at Yahoo news because something weird was going on in New York. I looked and I remember seeing a headline about a fire in the World Trade Center. Then another email from Nick. Then I thought I shoud call my parents before the phone lines went dead, as they invariably do for intercontinental calls during times of crises. So I called my parents, they watched the news as I watched the internet, and doodled in my new notebooks and nibbled at my sandwich. We stayed like that for several hours; me doodling, just hanging on the phone with my parents. Finally it was time to go home, and I walked out of the office a different person, as we all did that day.

The point is, whenever I look at Muji pens and notebooks now, I remember that feeling, I remember my parents' voices, I remember the confusion and the sorrow, and I remember very much wanting to be around Americans and eat at a TGI Friday's with unlimited icey coke refills.

It makes just as much sense to me as carrying a glossy paper representation of someone.

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In other news, I bought some pens this weekend from Office Max. I'm not usually an Office Max girl, prefering Office Depot because they have a nicer looking logo (I hate courier font in general and especially on a logo) and because Office Depot sponsors Carl Edwards in Nascar, and he's super-cute. When you go into many Office Depot's, they have a lifesize cardboard cutout of him, and I like to pretend to lick it as I walk past.

But I went into Office Max and was happily surprised to see this new line of writing instruments designed for them – the brand is Tul, and it looks all Scandinavian and minimalist and like the kind of pens you'd write with while sitting at your Ikea kitchen table with your perfect laughing baby, and your perfect blond haired husband scaling a perfect Scandinavian cod next to you.

So I was a little bit scared of them, but decided to give them a whirl. And I'm glad I did because I highly approve. The writing is smooth, the tips are strong and bold in the 7mm ones, and very easy to write with in the fine 5mm ones. The pens are nice to hold and just feel good in your hand. Not at all Scandinavian.

Also, I've bought some notebooks from Target's new batch of eco-friendly ones. I like the banana paper you can get at whole foods, and this new stuff didn't look very eco-friendly and recycled, but I guess that's part of the appeal – no banana fibers to distract you from your important writing. They come in many different sizes, too, so it's a versatile collection, and I'm definitely a fan.

In a few weeks I'll be visiting my boss's favorite stationary store in Oakland with her. I'm very excited.

Why Pens? Why blog about pens?

It's been a while since I've blogged, and it's especially been a while since I blogged about pens. Since I started this blog I've done the following:
1. Met my now-husband
2. Moved in with my now-husband
3. Got married
4. Am in the process of buying a house

While I have been able to keep up a modicum of journaling, and have managed to go through about 5 or 6 notebooks, I haven't had a chance to keep writing about my love affair with pens and notebooks.

We are going to be moving up to the mountains (the Lake Arrowhead area) in a few weeks, and I think that my life will be a lot calmer without all the stress of LA just outside my door. So I am hoping to be able to write about pens and notebooks more often.

To that end, I thought I would paste in a Post to the Host that I sent to Garrison Keillor, of Prairie Home Companion fame, about my pen fetish. And his response. I think it very eloquently sums up why people like me (and him, evidently!) like pens, why they are good, why the world is a better place with them, and why we'd all be happier if we'd leave the keyboard and write out a page or two in longhand once a day.

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Dear Garrison:

I suffer from a blank notebook/book/pen fetish. All over my apartment there are books and notebooks strewn about and I can't walk out of The Strand without dropping at least $50. This is bad for several reasons. I move around a lot. When I moved to London I could only take three suitcases, two of which were crammed with books and journals and a shoebox of pens. Having such a large percentage of my luggage taken up with books/stationary made it difficult once winter came and I needed sweaters. And I simply lack the space to store all this stuff. I'm 27—I'm moving to New Zealand soon. So what do I do? Should I sell all my books on ebay and pay back my student loans and then buy more when I have a house and room for a library? Or do I keep collecting them and just deal with the fact that I'm never going to be the kind of girl who can fit her life in a backpack?

Heather A. Buettner
New York, NY

Heather,

I'm happy to meet someone at last who shares my secret predilections. What you describe is all very familiar to me. If I see a stationery store, my heart jumps, and when I go in and see a whole counter of pens, I am helpless to resist. I buy about a dozen, or two. I love Pilot pens and the Sanford Uni-Ball and have tried various German and Japanese things, though I consider the Mont Blanc to be an obscene rip-off.

I also buy books, steadily, more than I can read, and when I stroll into a bookstore, particularly one of those independent ones that's run by people who share my tastes, it's hard to get out with less than a shopping bag full. And now that I'm rediscovering the pleasures of writing in longhand, I'm stocking up on legal pads, and various other paper supplies ... hmmm, graph paper, maybe this could give me a stronger sense of structure.

What to do? Well, don't strain your back, my dear. A person can handle only so much luggage. If you love to buy books, then you should also learn to love to give away books. But if you are actually using the pens to write on the paper, then buying them isn't a fetish. It's simply the sensible pleasure of writing, including the sensuous feel of a lovely pen in the hand and the point against the paper. A person can take a lifetime of pleasure in this. You pick up a sheet of handsome paper and your favorite pen and pick up a book to use for a writing desk and hold it on your knees and proceed to improve the page with a few paragraphs and thus you leave your mark. A noble enterprise, nothing to be sheepish about.