Item: 1 Waterman fountain pen

I haven't used this pen in quite awhile, which means it took some effort to get the ink to start running again.  I haven't used it much because almost everything I do now is via a keyboard.  Like today.  This is basically what I've been doing for most of the daylight hours today, punching letters into a keyboard.

I like having a pen that's well-made, a tool sustainable for years and years, only requiring you to get more ink.  This is something that wasn't designed from Day 1 to be thrown away.  If I look at things I wrote years ago using a fountain pen, the ink has faded.  But, well, this is what ink is supposed to do.  Time passes.  The ink reveals it.

Sometimes I crave not just a freedom from technology, but the ability to pretend it never existed at all.  Writing by candlelight with a fountain pen is far removed from what I'm doing now sitting here with a computer in the kitchen.  Writing from the shadows with fresh black ink and the sound of the pen scratching on the page -- regardless of what the results may be, the act of doing it itself is lovely.  Writing by electric light, with DSL and readable fonts is all about results, all about getting it done, getting down something that I'm happy with as quickly as possible.

I think it must have been in the Levenger catalog that I read about someone saying his handwriting was a lot better when he used a fountain pen.  This is because it forces the person holding the pen to slow down slightly.  But even with the slight change, the quality of craftsmanship became better.  When all of life was slow like this, the experience of a day must have been something altogether else than this one of mine.