fountain pens
in a good world, in a just world, you would only ever need three fountain pens. your childhood fountain pen would facilitate your learning to use and to respect a fountain pen. you would learn to write with it, to refill it, to keep the nib clean, to draw with it, to be expressive with it. you would learn never to throw it against the wall, never to use it as a dart, and never to use it to decorate a girl's hair. then you would be ready for your adolescent pen, your teenaged pen. it has to be tougher because your feelings and emotions are so much more exaggerated. if you were lucky, you would learn to clean it, to change nibs, to use different colored inks, to decorate the edges of your paper with drawings or abstractions that reflected your mood, or the season, or having driven away your girlfriend, your boyfriend, or some other significant friend. and you would write and write and write, because you're a teenager and you have everso oh so much to say but nobody listens. and then click. you turn twenty, and about half of that shuts up. but suddenly you're trying to act like a grownup, so much so that your still-teenager friends no longer trust you. you need a new pen, a grownup pen, one that expresses your new maturity, your new responsibility, your new possibilities, your new appreciation of yourself and of others. in a good world, in a just world, you would find such a pen when you're twenty and pass it down to a grandchild when you're done with writing, except it would probably be used up, and your grandchild would only treasure it for all it had been to you. even in a real world, in which it takes so many more than three fountain pens to get through a lifetime, how wonderful that so many engineers, inventors, and craftspersons collaborated so you could have that magnificent device! good writing!
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