a useful object

I just found my pencil case again. It’s been missing since shortly after I moved back to New Orleans in 2019. I thought it went missing in the move but it’s actually been sitting in a purse that I was using on a regular basis for a while until it got swiped during the pandemic. I recovered the purse but just kinda quit using it after that and it’s been sitting in a pile of stuff since then.

The rest of this post is something I wrote on Livejournal back in 2010. I dug it up today because I was missing this pencil case. Maybe that helped me think of where it was. Maybe not. It still describes the connection this simple little artifact has to my history.


I have this little metal tin I bought in 2000 or 2001. It’s flaked aluminum and has Pochacco on it; I bought it at the Hello Kitty store because it was cute and I liked the font on it. And because I wanted something better than an old cardboard box or whatever. The fact that it totally queered my classmates out was a bonus (remember, I was still a boy back in 2000). It’s got room for 7-10 pens or pencils (depending on if one of them is a thick black marker), a little sharpener, and a plastic eraser. It looked cute sticking out of my jeans pocket when that was my primary means of transport, and it fits nicely in my purse nowadays as well.

At this point the only way I’ll replace it is if it gets lost, or if it falls out of my purse and gets run over by a car or something. It’s been dented and I’ve bent its rounded lid back into shape. It’s gone to cons and been my entire toolkit for doing table sketchbooks. At some point in the next few years I will meet an emerging artist who is younger than my pencil case and I will feel terribly, terribly old. And also strangely proud; with all the chaos I’ve been through in the past decade, this simple little object is kind of a connection to my past. I went to the Griffith Park Zoo I don’t know how many times with this and a sketchbook; it’s gone to friends’ places and been invaluable during late-night sessions of watching TV, chatting, and doodling. The exact contents vary over time as different pens come and go, but it probably won’t be anything exotic – the demise of the Blackwing cured my tool fetishism.

Some people have giant boxes that can store every tool they might ever need, and haul that to cons. Me? I just carry around this tiny selection of stuff. I have a lot more at home to play with – paint, colored pencils, and of course the computer – but this is all I really need. Less stuff = less superfluous decisions = one less thing to keep me from focusing.


Here in 2024 it’s looking a lot more battered than it was back in 2010. I think I need to add “rusts into uselessness” to the list of reasons I’ll ever replace it. I was real close to ordering a cheap, undecorated pencil tin off of Jetpens before I found this today. If Sanrio still made pencil tins I’d probably have ordered one but all their pencil cases are plastic or fabric now.