Pavlov’s Stationery
I’m pretty sure it’s not normal to start salivating when faced with stationery. Pretty sure. I know we stationery people are weird, but not that weird. Maybe it’s because I have swapped ring doughnuts for ring binders, I don’t know.
Photo by Tucker Good on Unsplash (cropped)
As I bring my PhD to a close, my partner is just starting his. He got his lovely new desk in the department (jealous) with the other post-grads and we came in with arms loaded full of office supplies. The other PhDs gathered close round, begging to know what we had. Tom laughed it off, then realized how serious they were. “No, really. What do you have there?” Pens, inbox tray, file folders, a new cork board… The ripple of pleasure that ran ’round the room was tangible. I told them about the new laminator I had at home. One collapsed back into his chair. “Ah, the dream. To have a laminator,” he said.
I have found my people.
Later in the car Tom confessed he had no idea why we’re all so taken with stationery. And I was thinking the same thing earlier as I stood in the Student Union and evaluated every single pen, eraser, and portfolio case to weigh my desire against necessity.[footnote]Naturally I came home with a new ring binder, pocket dividers, a notepad with purple paper, a pocket sketchbook, bulldog clips, binder clips, Faber-Castell multicolored pens, and a zippered carry case. I marched it all to the register and right past the rows of chocolate muffins with nary a temptation.[/footnote] One can only attempt to explain in so many ways the giddiness, the tingling of the fingers, the pure euphoria to someone who just doesn’t understand. And yes, the salivating. Am I really the only person who does that? Fuck me, I’m Pavlov’s Stationery.
The Closest I’ve Come to an Excuse Explanation
Half of pleasure is anticipation. And a large part of anticipation is potential. The “what if.” I especially love browsing office supplies in universities. I know most of the notebooks are going to be half-full of basic notes embellished with phallic graffiti and tossed into the bin by the end of the semester. But how many of them will be the notes that lead to a cure for MS? Or a poet laureate? Or even better, the cure for poetry?
That’s only part of the fascination. The rest is purely selfish. I look around at the notepads and the leather-bound journals and the accordion files and imagine them filled with my potential. This stack here is my new novel. This book of graph paper is where I will draw out the branching narrative of my next game. These pen will scribble rewrites for the conversion of my dissertation for publication.
When my fingers twitch and my palms tingle, it’s because I am imagining all the wonderful things I could create with these tools if I was more productive and less inclined to pass out on the sofa in a sugar coma.[footnote]Chew pens, not peanut brittle![/footnote]
Pavlov may have had a point. Probably a ball point.
So please, those of you who love your papyrophiles (yay, new word!), be gentle on them. We are so many cats rubbing our faces against our new office supplies to make them ours. We can’t help our strange obsession. It’s part of the creative process. And to my fellow papyrophiles: let that obsession feed your creative impulse. Just don’t put yourself into debt over it. And if you do start salivating, please see a therapist. I’ll see you in the recovery room.
Footnotes
- Naturally I came home with a new ring binder, pocket dividers, a notepad with purple paper, a pocket sketchbook, bulldog clips, binder clips, Faber-Castell multicolored pens, and a zippered carry case. I marched it all to the register and right past the rows of chocolate muffins with nary a temptation.
- Chew pens, not peanut brittle!