How to take your pen for a walk
For the longest time, it’s either been sharp, slashing lines, or Top Ramen squiggles. I am at the counter in a stationery shop trying out a new pen. The man behind the counter disinterestedly thrusts some scribbling paper. It’s the park where I can take my pen for a walk. And very reassuringly it is filled with the same squiggles, lines, and the occasional Good Morning. I feel perfectly at home.
But surely there has to be a better way to take your pen for a spin; a more enjoyable test drive?
Teju Cole in the preface to his collection of essays Known and Strange Things, says while trying out a new pen he writes out the first line of Beowulf. (In case you are interested: So the Spear-Danes in days gone by and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness. Works for him, what can I say?)
And it reminded me that I used to do this too. For a while (ahem, at least two decades ago), straining under existential tragedies I would test pens at the shop with the opening of Sonnet 30: When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I alone beweep my outcaste state.
I find it very satisfying, the idea of leaving behind something more meaningful than a pointless Good Morning or diagrams of non-existent constellations. No one might care, or one person might find it charming. Think of it as an option to leaving a book on the Subway. In any case, if that’s the pen you want to write with, wouldn’t you rather test it with the kind of prose or verse you one day aspire to write? To see how the ink leaks out, the words form — smoothly or hesitatingly, find the pen’s character? No… it’s not just me: a close friend goes with: All the world’s a stage, so I know I’m not a lone crusader.
The habit stopped, however, until I came across that Teju Cole preface and I wondered if it isn’t time to start this again — and perhaps encourage others to follow suit. If I may be so bold as to suggest some options for you to choose, and hopefully these would inspire you to find your own; or better still, create your own.
Poetry is a great place to start, and Neruda is often my first Port of Call.
Leaning into the afternoons, I cast my sad nets towards your oceanic eyes.
Tonight I can write the saddest of lines.
My favourite from school days (Saki): The cook was a good cook, as cooks go; and as cooks go, she went.
And another, which was not only used while testing new pens, but also became part of my general snobbery: The grass looked like it had been left out all night.
I am now at that stage of life when I want leave behind something less sizzling in wit, but burning more with the urgency of life’s meaninglessness. And my tour guide is naturally Franz Kafka.
From his diary (Dec 22, 1910): Shouted into this empty day, it would have a disgusting echo.
But this line is only for testing ballpoint pens. For all their utility and convenience, they deserve it.
What I test my pens with right now… is so beautiful, I could write it all day, whether I am testing a pen or not, at a shop or at my desk, and this whole article has merely been an excuse to write it again.
From Haroun and the Sea of Stories: There was once in country of Alifbay, a sad city, the saddest of cities, a city so ruinously sad, it had forgotten its name.
