People have asked why I'm titling this "ink smudges." Or, what's with the references to fountain pens? Fair question. Below is a description originally published as part of a class project in web site design, now defunct, but may be floating around in google's archives somewhere.
Beneath the rule of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword.
- English novelist and dramatist Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton (1803–1873)
What does it mean to write, to create language, with a thing of beauty? To make art with art? Is it to yearn, in language, for the beauty held in the hand?
The fountain pen calls to mind an era before word processors, an era when to communicate was both work and art. Today, more than ever, a handwritten letter is work, remarkably inefficient when compared to email or a phone call. And usually all the more precious for the recipient.
All of us who have written in a journal, or struggled with the delicate composition of a love letter or a sonnet, have experienced the frustration of staring through the cage of our own futile ink-strokes, as our limited mortality yearns and struggles toward the absolute beauty that lurks beneath the surface of a blank piece of paper, if we could only release it.
Fountain pen nuts know well the sensory reality of this creative genius. The nib scratches across the page, with a wonderful flexibility that allows you to shout in broad strokes or whisper in faint ones. The ink has a scent, either acrid or sweet. The paper has texture, smooth or rough, cottony or linen.
The magic is also in the making of art, as well as in the end product. And as those of us who use fountain pens know, the ink has creative magic. As you write, the ink reflects for an instant the light of heaven – your own words sparkling, pausing perhaps for self-contemplation, or perhaps for divine blessing, before drawing down into the page, anchoring into reality.
An open bottle of ink is a disaster waiting deliciously to happen. Keep an eye on it, and for heaven’s sake don’t knock it over—you never know what might happen. But there’s only so much ink in the reservoir, only so much divine creative spark available at a time. And then we have to flirt with danger. Like we puny mortals, our pens must deliberately recharge at our source of life. And in filling the pen, like in filling ourselves, we run the danger of coming in contact with the divine source of creativity. That can get messy – and stain us, so that the world can see our painted fingers days later.
Every so often, pens leak. Ever thought about what that means? I actually like getting ink all over my hands—the ink outlines in high relief God’s handiwork in my fingerprints. It reminds me that the gospel is not dry, contained, but living and active.
And then there’s the objects, the pens themselves. Different materials, different uses, from disposable plastic to mysterious resin to precious silver and gold. All with different and seductively sensual textures; smooth, cool, sharp, feather-light, heavy, regal.
The names of the models have meaning, too.
Amadeus
Diplomat
Elysium
Core
Masterpiece
Eco-World
Varsity
Lifetime
There’s a reason that nobody names a pen writer’s block. Or inarticulate.
What are you carrying in your pocket today? Did you even notice? Merely a pen, a writing stick, or are you carrying Elysium in your pocket? A little touch of heaven, exquisitely crafted, holding in its unseen womb a finite quantity (all the more precious) of divine inspiration waiting to be unleashed?
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
St. Sam used a typewriter; I use a fountain pen.
4 comments:
The same Bulwer-Lytton?
http://www.bulwer-lytton.com :
"Where WWW means 'Wretched Writers Welcome'"
"...Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, a whimsical literary competition that challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels..."
"'It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents--except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.'"
Hm. Might've done better without quoting him.
Then again, of the two pens in my pocket, the first was kleptomaniacally secured from a place of business somewhere, and the second espouses a political organization favored by my mother-in-law (and was probably thus also swiped). I guess I'm a Philistine in Internet clothing.
The very same!
Here's where I say something like, "Oh, yes, IRONY! No, we don't normally get that here. We're a church, after all."
Still makes a good quote, but all the more delicious if you know the back story.
Cute.
I should point out that I *did* like your "description" prose.
Oddly enough, if I am writing, I find a computer much more conducive to actually generating prose. Partially because I have hand tremors which make the controlled strokes needed to generate handwriting very tiring, but more so because my hands don't want to write with pens, they want to *draw*. All of my notes for anything are covered with doodles and designs -- sometimes I end up spending more time on them than on writing down whatever it is I need to. Taking notes during boring meeting (such as Diocesan Convention meetings) becomes a lost cause -- although I have some nice doodles of roses from the last one I attended.
Post a Comment