“And fingers yearn for pen, pen for paper. A moment... and verses freely flow.”
- Alexander Pushkin
I am grateful for fountain pens.
I rediscovered fountain pens when looking for an alternative to the disposable plastic ballpoint pens I was burning through while keeping my daily journal. The solution was a fountain pen with a converter - a piston like mechanism that allows me to refill the pen from a glass bottle of ink. It was perfect! I still have half a bottle of ink left after almost two years with zero waste generated.
An added bonus is that writing with a fountain pen is a far superior experience. Cursive writing may soon become a lost art - it is not even part of the school curriculum having been replaced by keyboarding. As I write in my journal, I often ponder if future generations will even be able to read my words.
Writing with a fountain pen on paper a very satisfying experience. There is something about the feel of the nib as it scribes my thoughts at a pace demanding mindfulness. Keyboarding has its merits, particularly in a world where speed of creation is so valued. But there is joy in crafting something by hand.
Writing with fountain pen recalls an earlier time when writing was an art form in itself. Correspondence was slow, marked by physical exchanges of handwritten letters over time rather than the instantaneous texting of today. But progress marches on. Fountain pens were an innovation in their time. An earlier scribe likely wrote about the pleasure of writing with the fountain pen's predecessor, the dip pen, a pen with no reservoir that required the writer to periodically dip the pen in an inkwell. The earliest were made from feathers. I'm curious to try one.
There is value in cherishing items like fountain pens that still bring pleasure and cultivate creativity. I use a Pilot Metropolitan pen with an optional converter purchased from the brick and mortar Phidon Pens shop in the old Galt district of Cambridge, Ontario.
What is your favourite writing instrument?
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash