I’ll admit it: I have a borderline-obsessive interest in writing instruments. I have dallied with them all, from fountain pens to felt tips, from exotic fiber-tips to liquid ink rollers and gel pens. Along the way I have lost some favorite shirts to the spreading dufus spot of ink radiating from the pocket, a souvenir of my forgetting to retract. It’s alarming to find yourself sidling over to the pen display at Staples when you really came in for a printer cartridge or some envelopes. And I have had to eat a lot of Dundee Orange Marmalade to collect enough ceramic jars to hold all those pens.
Meanwhile, the pencils sat around, relegated to marking spots on walls to hang pictures or occasional duty filling in the bubbles on standardized tests. Until recently, when I became disillusioned yet again with the latest nanoparticle-ink-titanium-ball-quantum-gelroller*. I picked up a pencil to take notes in a meeting, and it was as if discovering pencils for the first time. It is a very different kind of writing. It is much more tactile, a little more like drawing than writing. A pencil in your hand begs you to doodle in the margins. I seem to have much more control over the letter strokes than with slippery rollers or stubborn ballpoints.
The names are evocative of childhood: Dixon, Ticonderoga, Eberhard Faber. There is the historical connection to the earliest writing implements — homonids were probably using rocks to scratch marks on other rocks before they figured out brushes and ink. And how often do Thoreau’s admirers forget to mention that he was a maker of pencils before he headed out to Walden Pond?
*Fictitious item. Please don’t ask me where to find one. If you do find one, please don’t tell me.
