A Pen

Growing up I loved to write. I wrote stories and series for myself and it would be pages among pages of hand written stories or books. I remember I had written 500 pages of a book more than ten years ago that I still open and edit. All of these were handwritten first. I would use a paper pad and a pen. I was was always very picky when it came to using the writing equipment. My journal has a specific pen I use otherwise it feels like I had committed a crime. I once bought a Swarovski pen specially for my leather journal. The weight of it was perfect, but I had written with smoother pens before. Yet, this pen reminded me that I can sparkle too because of course it had Swarovski crystals in it. I kept it in a box that I would take out every time I journaled. This was not my favorite pen though. The easiest pen I have ever used was from a company that you could purchase from Chapters/Indigo. It was called poppin because they had used bright, fun, colors to make writing supplies wonderful. I remember the first time I used it. I was in university and was in need of very good pens because I did not have a reliable laptop to carry to my classes. I picked up the box I bought and picked one out of the box. I took the little gel bead off the top that blocks the ink. I placed it on the paper and it started to flow, it was the most pleasant feeling I felt in a long time. As soon as it touched the paper the pen wanted to write more, it wrote so smoothly I immediately hid the other pens back into my backpack so no one could “borrow” it we all know that meant you were never seeing that pen again. The ink was deliciously smooth writing across my notebook. I wanted to keep going even after I was done. I started doodling and found joy in writing again. That’s how much a pen can change your day. I know it’s such an adult thing to say. I wrote with other pens too such as the frixion pens because an erasable pen that actually erases. All that’s left is the indent on the page how ingenious! I remember in elementary they were “erasable” but you could still see remnants of blue on the page and if you wrote on top of it, it looked sloppy.

The perfect pen should make you feel powerful the quote “the pen is mightier than the sword” had to come from somewhere. The perfect pen should be an extension of your thoughts- effortless, reliable and balanced. It should feel not too heavy or too light but harmonious to your hand. The ink flows consistently, neither too bold nor too faint, gliding across the page without skipping, smudging, or bleeding through. It creates stories from nothingness, it guides us to the right direction. The pen is what we have to prove that history had made its mark without it many poets would not be recognized. We can forget about Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, Pablo Naruda, and Mary Oliver we would not know them. We would have never heard of them if it was not for the mighty but small object the pen.

The pen is what bridges a thought into permanence. Once a contract is signed with wet ink its legal. Once you start writing an idea it starts to become a creation. Each stroke and word it transforms invisible emotions to tangible marks on a page. It becomes something that we share as when someone else reads our words they understand grief, heartache, longing, laughter, happiness on a level they did not understand themselves. So I say this again dear reader the pen is in fact mightier than the sword.