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Pens Away!January 22, 2011 Working on To Be Rather Than to Seem lately I've been getting sludgy. I'm moving into the 1980s, when I was writing and publishing a lot more, and thinking of myself primarily as a writer. My head is full of interconnected stuff, everything is multiply linked to everything else, and I couldn't even figure out where to start. Finally I caught on: Been there, done that -- left brain gets paralyzed in situations like this, let right brain have a go. With me computers are a left-brain tool. Their output is crisp, with clearly defined words, lines, paragraphs, files. Trying to turn amorphous interconnected stuff into clearly defined words, lines, paragraphs, and files with appropriate titles -- that way lies paralysis. I was paralyzed and floundering all at the same time. Not good. Right brain loves writing in longhand. My handwriting is borderline illegible. Nothing is clearly defined. One letter flows into the next, one word into the next, one line into the next, one subject into the next, with nary a worry that I'm not writing about what I started out to write about. I'd been away from my pens long enough that their ink had either evaporated or dried up. Bad sign. The pens, however, are forgiving, and I have plenty of ink. I retrieved a spiral-bound notebook that has "The Essequam Book" written in black cherry ink at the top of the first page. (Essequam is short for Essequam videri, the Latin original of To Be Rather Than to Seem.) It had plenty of blank pages left. I plucked my pens out of what they probably thought was their long winter's nap, filled them with ink, and started writing.
Here's the current arsenal, arrayed on top of Hekate along with my indispensable reading specs. From left: a Sailor Procolor, currently writing in green ink; Pelikan 200 (red-orange); Verona (blue-black); another Pelikan 200, this one a demonstrator (black cherry); and a Pilot/Namiki (purple). My turquoise Sailor Procolor has gone missing. It may be hiding in the chaos that is my apartment, or it may have fallen unnoticed into the wastebasket under my desk and been lost forever -- which is what happened to my first born-again longhand writer pen, I think. No sooner had I pressed my pens back into service than I started thinking of acquiring more. In the last 24 hours I've been haunting eBay again, on the lookout especially for Pelikans and Sailors. This afternoon I lost out on a Sailor 1911 in the last 60 seconds of bidding, when the price went from $88 to $121. I'm watching two for which bidding closes in the next 24 hours. Meanwhile I just ordered a Platinum from Fahrney's Pens in D.C. It's really pretty. You don't want to know how much I paid for it. In my defense I must say that it was a fraction of what Hekate the laptop cost me last summer, and why shouldn't I be investing as much in tools for my right brain as I do in tools for my left?
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