Live by the Pen
I’ve always held a special reverence for a good pen. A good pen needs to be hefty, substantial, retractable, and refillable: hefty and substantial to engender respect, as it’s well known that bigger is better; and retractable and refillable because it’s well known that complexity is better. I know I’m not alone in this. A good pen and a good writing volume (e.g. notebook) are essential to the capture of elegant pondering.
Currently, I use the Pilot Dr. Grip, Ltd., in charcoal gray. This pen satisfied all needs noted above, and both created and satisfied an additional need I didn’t know I’d had: novelty. I’ve never used a gel-ink pen before, and now I can say I have. W00t.
For months now, I’ve carried that pen and my Moleskine notebooks around, waiting for that most glorious of epiphanies to strike. That pen and I have filled one notebook with poetry, with awesome appraisals of the good and bad of the world, with admittedly trite or vile rambling. We’ve steadily worked toward the completion of notebook #2, expanding both the reach and depth of material.
Imagine, then, now inculcated as you are by the mystique of the Good Pen, how damning to this whole endeavor is the following realization: this pen writes like hell. It’s true. Sit down, grab a brandy, and listen to me, man. I can’t tell you how many times, even when the gel-ink well inside that sleek fuselage was brand new, I shook that pen to ensure the ink actually made it to the paper. All through those notebooks—which are truly fine if a bit faddish—are passages evincing a lack of ink continuity. When writing, cerebral continuity goes as medium continuity goes. If your stainless steel keyboard reliably transmits only 90% of what you type, there’s no rhythm to be found. Writing being the spectacular song it is, without rhythm you’re likely to end up the next Jack Chalker.
So, I will set aside my shallow ambition to write Great things on Great paper with a Great pen, and rather will write Things on Paper with a Pen. Probably a Bic retractable, black.
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