Pages and Pages

Blank pages are powerful. A blank word processing document, for instance, instills a very different feeling (anxiety, the pressure of things to be done) than does a blank page in a journal or a sketchbook (pristine, awaiting undefined possibilities).  The physicality of paper, of a well-bound stack of fresh paper, has always held an undefinable attraction. It’s the same thing, I suspect, that makes us continue to love physical books despite the practicality of e-readers. We love them because they (in the words of a professor today) “look like books, smell like books, (ruffles pages) like books.”

Somehow, I’ve always harboured a sort of hoarding tendency towards blank journals, notebooks, and more especially so if they were hardcover or boasted unlined pages. I’d be afraid to use the pages, be afraid of besmirching them with things that didn’t actually merit being transferred to nice paper. (I’ve been trying to get over that- I recently splurged on a oddslot Moleskine, very nice indeed, and have been forcing myself to write in it, in pen.) And so every now and then in a fit of determination I’d try my hand at gathering together my own blank pages into little booklets.

Bookbinding turns out to be an art that satisfies such cravings. Rather than a purely methodical process of production, it’s a skilled craft, a flexible craft. There are proper tools, materials, techniques, and I am yet an outsider. But with plain cartridge paper, some cardboard, a bit of glue, and very rudimentary sewing abilities, anyone might be able to gather paper into a bound form, a tangible block of pages, something that you yourself have created, and can now use, and which no-one else has.

Those with more skill can, of course, turn out books that are not only things we’d like to grasp in our own sweaty paws, but that are things to feast one’s eyes upon. And if you’re feeling a bit adventurous, there is a wonderful collection of DIY books here, complete with instructions, collected from users all over the web.