I'm addicted. Horribly addicted.
I did a lot of research to figure out what would work for me. I'm a heavy, quick writer, with a pretty florid writing style, so it seemed like a broad-nibbed 'wet' writer was just the ticket. After spending some time playing in Artlite (the only fountain pen shop I know of within driving distance) I found a pen that I was ready to adopt. I got a surprisingly good deal on it; someone had returned it because they couldn't handle the very characteristics that made me seek it out in the first place.
My baby is a Pelikan Souverän M1000, and let me tell you, it's a blowsy spendthrift of a pen; it all but throws ink out of the nib. This pen will outlive cockroaches. Actually, this pen may outlive all ink. It's an absolute tank. It's the largest of the Souverän line and it's designed to eat smaller pens for lunch without pausing for refills.
But the better story is the second pen. While I love, adore, and baby my Souverän to near senselessness, I recognize that it's not good for all things. That nib is militantly broad, and it's not gonna tone itself down come hell, high water, or Republicans, nosiree. I wanted a very different pen -- a fine-nibbed, delicate filly -- for things like forms and precision work.
Enter Joyce, who piped up one day and said, "You know, I have a pen from my exchange student days in France. If you'll give it a good home, I'll give it to you. I hate thinking it's just lying there in a drawer."
I took it home, tried it out, and realized it would work very well. It was a school pen, lightweight, fine-nibbed, intended to be a very legible classroom workhorse...and it was malfunctioning like crazy. Ink blots the size of Christmas trees.
Back to Artlite, who looked at it, identified it as a Waterman of unknown origin, and handed me a box to mail it in.
A couple of days ago I got a call from Waterman. They were curious to know how I'd gotten a pen -- the Waterman Allure -- that was only manufactured in France. I gave them the story of Joyce. They told me a little about the history of the pen, and said that they'd shipped it to France for repairs, because nobody in the States knew how to fix it, and the total repair bill would be $30 and could they charge my credit card?
Done.
As soon as she's back from her globe-trotting, I'll introduce her to all of you.
(Yes, thank you, I've joined the ranks of the addicted. Wait until I start babbling about ink.)
]]>I had been late getting to her house, due to a set of scheduling changes that meant I stayed somewhere else for a second night, a night that for some reason felt as right as it did necessary and, after all, hadn't I planned on coming to Atlanta sans plans?
* * * * *
By the time I'd gotten there I was toting a new fountain pen that I hadn't planned on buying, tucked securely into my notebook where dozens of cheaper pens had briefly languished before. I'd walked in with the firmest of intentions of buying only a couple of bottles of ink and the barest of consideration for perhaps just trying a new pen. I'd just try one, I thought, and I'd see what I thought about how it felt in my hand. I'd learn what intrigued me and I'd be prepared for later.
I expected the seductive siren song of the fountain pen but not the blatant, luscious feel of putting that saucy little Aurora in my hand and understanding that whether I denied it or not, that was my pen. Others wrote smoother or cleaner or felt lighter in my hand, but I understood why this one had been relegated to the sale rack.
"Not a lot of market for broad italic nibs these days," the salesman agreed. He brought out other pens, sleek blue and chrome numbers with fine, racehorse-filly nibs that laid down gently variegated widths of ink depending on delicate pressure changes, but this one whispered too me. I'm too broad for little words and too angled for straight ones, it said. Use me, and I'll take those subtle linguistic flourishes in your mind and paint them in permanent ink for you.
I bought the pen and resolved to never, ever regret the work clothing I should have bought with that money.
* * * * *
We were on a kamikaze run for paper before the nexuscon meeting, and it had been a long time since we talked. The freshening breezes of days prior were sharpening into rain-bearing winds, and I found myself grateful for the purple sweater I wore that day. We talked about marriage. Hers. Mine. Our parents. Our friends. We talked about fears, and she spoke words that gave voice to fears I've harbored for years: "I'm afraid of dying first. Not for me, but for him."
"I know how independent I am, and I know just how devastated I would be after losing him."
"I think we all fear being the one left behind, even more than we fear death."
"There are some thoughts that, once said, take away some part of your innocence. You can't take them back, and you can't go back to the person you were before you thought them for the first time."
I looked at her, looked again and thought of the changes she's made in her life in the past few months, new glasses and makeup and hair and clothing and life choices, and I knew with this aching, settled certainty that life truly is every savoring shade of bittersweet that I always thought it might be. We will change and keep changing in directions that we can't predict and can't prevent until those scattered, far-flung days when we ourselves will stop changing. If we're lucky we'll carry memories of moments like these, of tromping in parking lots with combat boots and cashmere sweaters, and if we're luckier still others will carry them for us.
* * * * *
I thought of these things, thought and couldn't write, pen hovering over paper and ink waiting through the magic of capillary action to be painted onto paper. Thought of the purple koi scarf and the cashmere sweater and Suzan's red hair and cat-eye glasses and hoped that I'd find some way of committing these moments to memory before they, too, vanished.
As we ran for the hotel lobby, the winds sharpened to needle points of rain.
]]>Jeff will tell you that one of the most frustrating parts about living with me is my inability to avoid 'just borrowing' the pen closest at hand, and then accidentally setting it down in an unfindable 'else' or tucking it away in my pocket, never to return. (My mother, many years ago, would tell similar tales about her scissors.)
He'll tell you he's lost countless pens that way, and I can't dispute it. The only pen that seems to be safe from my thieving, forgetful fingers is the one clamped to his checkbook, but this would be a far more significant statement if his checkbook saw more than its current once-monthly use.
I know for a fact that this house contains 6 pair of scissors; my mind riffles through the handle colors while my hands remember their shapes; orange too large and hard for me to handle, purple slender and unsharp, black kitchen shears practically battered beyond use, red kindergarten scissors that my mother found and rescued a few years ago, black hair scissors that I must stop cutting threads with, and the luscious new sport-utility fabric scissors Jeff gave me for my birthday.
The red scissors are undoubtedly in the kindergarten coloring box emblazoned with my unmarried name in an awkward, hesitant script. The fabric scissors are next to my sewing un-kit on the reading room couch...
...the rest are either on a winter safari or are snuggled up under one of our friendly neighborhood piles of clutter. It may be years before they come visit again; I'm hoping they'll send Christmas cards.
I know there are undoubtedly pens scattered throughout this room and the guest bedroom next to me, but the chances of my finding one to start a morning to-do list are slim.
I love the slender whisper of a well-sharpened scissor, but what I have for pens can be described as nothing short of lust.
It started with a gold foil box, the calligraphic sum total of my childhood inheritance from my maternal grandmother. She dabbled in calligraphy, and had somehow amassed a collection of old dip-style calligraphic pens. I loved the feel, the flexibility, the tangible thrill of painting my words in bold, thick strokes.
Since then I've chased the perfect pen, with delicate moues of distaste at the anorexic ink lines so-called "bold" pens produce. Years of grabbing the nearest pen, using it to complete the task at hand, then laying it aside to find a better replacement in the next room have resulted. Our rooms are full of the tested, abused, and quickly forgotten.
I've often wondered if a fountain pen, one with a slashing-thick stream of ink and a nib with some give, would be the answer to my urge to write the world in large letters. I cannot shake the feeling that short of a specially-tailored wrist cuff, such a lovely, high-strung beast would do little more than skitter off to find its country cousins the first time I turned my back.
I'd be pleased if I could just find a pen to write out tomorrow's to-do list, but I keep finding scissors instead.
Somewhere, my mother is laughing.
]]>Current music: Cassandra Wilson, New Moon Daughter
Yes, this is my all-time favorite entry title for this site. Knew that much before I even finished the entry.
Hmm. scissortwins.com doesn't seem to be taken. Interesting. Very interesting.