1.
My favourite pen is a sapphire blue Parker fountain pen.
It is as sleek and hard and flamboyantly functional as a 1950s hot rod.
It truly enjoys ink. It has a healthy appetite for it.
However, the nib never clogs.
2.
I am not writing this with my pen.
I am writing this with my hands on my keyboard on a table in a cafe in Davis, where I live.
What I am writing now is fuelled by self consciousness and an instinct to avoid the paper I have to write.
An acquaintance of mine is sitting on the couch behind me reading 'McSweeneys.'
I was thinking of getting up and whispering loudly "dilettante!"
It would be playful. I have the same issue in my bag.
The Roddy Doyle story was particularly good.
3.
My pen, if given the choice, would write in Mongolia.
It would sit beside me in long, crackling grass and draw thick, steady lines over and over and over in a leather-bound book.
I would be there to look out for bison and grass pirates.
In my pen's version of Mongolia, there are, of course, bison and grass pirates.
4.
The plain is as wide and invariable as the ocean.
It makes my temples ache to look at the horizon. The horizon feels close but
it isn't, I would fail if I tried to reach out and touch it.
Just as I'd fail if I tried to stretch my fingertips out to either wall of this cafe.
It would be very good for my shoulders, though.
5.
My pen knows nothing of my fear of the ocean.
It's never seen it.
The closest its been to the ocean is Circular Quay.
I sat on a bench outside the Museum of Contemporary Art and wrote something in my black notebook.
I don't remember what. That notebook is back home.
Circular Quay doesn't count as the ocean.
My pen doesn't know that.
(continued in my website, 'cause this is getting kinda long)
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