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Posted: February 26th, 2008 at 2:20am By: Janet Conner
When you write by hand, you can write with anything. Your pen can run the gamut from that half-chewed pencil that's always next to the phone, to the ugly ballpoint your bank gave away last winter, to a luxurious new fountain pen. I opt for the latter. The way I see it, my pen is the physical vehicle for the voice of wisdom, so I want the voice to feel welcomed and revered.
After writing for years with a brown pen that was too heavy and too big for my hand, I fell in love with a lightweight Mont Blanc "Generation" fountain pen while browsing at a pen store in San Antonio, Texas, in 1999. My son had asked to go to Texas for our first post-divorce vacation. Texas? I thought. OK, dunno why, but off we went to Texas. (My son confessed years later that he'd watched way too much Chuck Norris in "Texas Ranger" at his father's and had filled his head with fantasies about the glories of Texas. Texas did not live up to Chuck Norris, but we had a great time, nonetheless.) We went on the Alamo tour, took a nifty river ride, and ate way too much Tex Mex. Somewhere in our tourist travels, we stumbled into a pen shop. Ooooo, a pen shop. Short of a bookstore, my favorite place on the planet. The moment I held that Mont Blanc pen, I knew I was a goner. I loved the shape and size and ultra-light weight of it. And oh, how I loved the color — deep, dark, ink blue with a thin gold trim. Counting the matching blue leather case, it cost almost $300, an extraordinary indulgence.
When I got back home, I tossed aside the heavy brown pen and dove into writing down my soul with my new blue pen. I tenderly took it out every morning and tucked it back in its case when I finished writing. And when it ran out of ink, I got a big kick out of filling the tiny bladder from a real ink bottle filled with — what else? — dark ink-blue ink. I carried it with me wherever I went: church, concert, speeches — anywhere I might hear something I'd want to remember or talk over with the voice.
Then, in the spring of 2003, it disappeared — at church, no less! I was heartbroken. I tried to write with something else, but it just wasn't the same. I went to the Mont Blanc store in Tampa to get another. Sorry, the salesman said, that model is no longer being produced.
Oh, dear. I wasn't prepared for that. Oh well, I thought, I'll just have to get something different. I looked at every pen in the store. If I could afford it, or even if I couldn't, I asked to touch the pens in the locked glass cases. But they were all too large, too small, too fat, too narrow, too long, too short, too heavy, too costly, too ornate, too blah, too something. My hand longed for my elegant, smooth, featherweight, resin pen. Taking pity on me, the salesman said he'd submit a worldwide search and let me know what he found.
It took four months, but at last he called. He had my pen. Forty-five minutes later, I was standing at his counter. Proudly he showed me the result of his search. It was my "Generation" pen, all right, but it was purple — distinctly, vividly, richly purple. I'm sorry, I said, I know you did a lot of work to find this pen, but my pen was blue — rich, deep, ink-blue — and I just can't write with this purple pen. He put it back in the box. I'll keep looking, he said.
Four months later, he called again. He said, "I have your pen." "Is it dark blue?" I asked. "Yes," he said. Never have I been happier to hold an object in my hand. I hugged it to my heart. He dabbed the nib in the store's crystal inkwell and passed the pen to me. I wrote Hello Voice, Hello Voice, Hello Voice in big, elated script across a whole page of the store's sample writing paper. Lord only knows what the next customer thought!
I still have my beautiful blue pen. It sits on a little writing table on top of my current journal. I still take a journal with me everywhere I go, but my fountain pen stays home. If I lost it, I can't be sure that Mont Blanc would come up with another.
Now, do you have to be quite so possessed by your pen? No, you don't. The universe will happily commune with you through a dollar-store ballpoint. But somehow holding my gorgeous blue pen — a pen I use only for this one special purpose — makes me happy. Maybe it's the little Catholic girl inside me longing for a touch of ritual. Maybe it's the sensuous nature of the whole writing experience. Then again, maybe it's just a good old-fashioned neurosis. Whatever it is, I love my pen. And I think it is rather fond of me, too.
— — —
Janet Conner teaches people how to connect directly to Spirit to receive the guidance and direction they need to create the life they want. Her new book, "Writing Down Your Soul: How to Activate and Listen to the Extraordinary Voice Within," comes out this fall from Conari Press. Learn more at www.writingdownyoursoul.com. Janet is also the creator of Spiritual Geography, a comprehensive spiritual-healing system that has been called "the first true innovation in healing the broken heart." "Spiritual Geography" workbooks are available through Amazon or Spiritual Geography. Contact Janet at {email janetconner@tampabay.rr.com}janetconner@tampabay.rr.com{/email}.© Copyright 2008 by Janet Conner.
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When you write by hand, you can write with anything. Your pen can run the gamut from that half-chewed pencil that's always next to the phone, to the ugly ballpoint your bank gave away last winter, to a luxurious new fountain pen. I opt for the latter. The way I see it, my pen is the physical vehicle for the voice of wisdom, so I want the voice to feel welcomed and revered.
After writing for years with a brown pen that was too heavy and too big for my hand, I fell in love with a lightweight Mont Blanc "Generation" fountain pen while browsing at a pen store in San Antonio, Texas, in 1999. My son had asked to go to Texas for our first post-divorce vacation. Texas? I thought. OK, dunno why, but off we went to Texas. (My son confessed years later that he'd watched way too much Chuck Norris in "Texas Ranger" at his father's and had filled his head with fantasies about the glories of Texas. Texas did not live up to Chuck Norris, but we had a great time, nonetheless.) We went on the Alamo tour, took a nifty river ride, and ate way too much Tex Mex. Somewhere in our tourist travels, we stumbled into a pen shop. Ooooo, a pen shop. Short of a bookstore, my favorite place on the planet. The moment I held that Mont Blanc pen, I knew I was a goner. I loved the shape and size and ultra-light weight of it. And oh, how I loved the color — deep, dark, ink blue with a thin gold trim. Counting the matching blue leather case, it cost almost $300, an extraordinary indulgence.
When I got back home, I tossed aside the heavy brown pen and dove into writing down my soul with my new blue pen. I tenderly took it out every morning and tucked it back in its case when I finished writing. And when it ran out of ink, I got a big kick out of filling the tiny bladder from a real ink bottle filled with — what else? — dark ink-blue ink. I carried it with me wherever I went: church, concert, speeches — anywhere I might hear something I'd want to remember or talk over with the voice.
Then, in the spring of 2003, it disappeared — at church, no less! I was heartbroken. I tried to write with something else, but it just wasn't the same. I went to the Mont Blanc store in Tampa to get another. Sorry, the salesman said, that model is no longer being produced.
Oh, dear. I wasn't prepared for that. Oh well, I thought, I'll just have to get something different. I looked at every pen in the store. If I could afford it, or even if I couldn't, I asked to touch the pens in the locked glass cases. But they were all too large, too small, too fat, too narrow, too long, too short, too heavy, too costly, too ornate, too blah, too something. My hand longed for my elegant, smooth, featherweight, resin pen. Taking pity on me, the salesman said he'd submit a worldwide search and let me know what he found.
It took four months, but at last he called. He had my pen. Forty-five minutes later, I was standing at his counter. Proudly he showed me the result of his search. It was my "Generation" pen, all right, but it was purple — distinctly, vividly, richly purple. I'm sorry, I said, I know you did a lot of work to find this pen, but my pen was blue — rich, deep, ink-blue — and I just can't write with this purple pen. He put it back in the box. I'll keep looking, he said.
Four months later, he called again. He said, "I have your pen." "Is it dark blue?" I asked. "Yes," he said. Never have I been happier to hold an object in my hand. I hugged it to my heart. He dabbed the nib in the store's crystal inkwell and passed the pen to me. I wrote Hello Voice, Hello Voice, Hello Voice in big, elated script across a whole page of the store's sample writing paper. Lord only knows what the next customer thought!
I still have my beautiful blue pen. It sits on a little writing table on top of my current journal. I still take a journal with me everywhere I go, but my fountain pen stays home. If I lost it, I can't be sure that Mont Blanc would come up with another.
Now, do you have to be quite so possessed by your pen? No, you don't. The universe will happily commune with you through a dollar-store ballpoint. But somehow holding my gorgeous blue pen — a pen I use only for this one special purpose — makes me happy. Maybe it's the little Catholic girl inside me longing for a touch of ritual. Maybe it's the sensuous nature of the whole writing experience. Then again, maybe it's just a good old-fashioned neurosis. Whatever it is, I love my pen. And I think it is rather fond of me, too.
— — —
Janet Conner teaches people how to connect directly to Spirit to receive the guidance and direction they need to create the life they want. Her new book, "Writing Down Your Soul: How to Activate and Listen to the Extraordinary Voice Within," comes out this fall from Conari Press. Learn more at www.writingdownyoursoul.com. Janet is also the creator of Spiritual Geography, a comprehensive spiritual-healing system that has been called "the first true innovation in healing the broken heart." "Spiritual Geography" workbooks are available through Amazon or Spiritual Geography. Contact Janet at {email janetconner@tampabay.rr.com}janetconner@tampabay.rr.com{/email}.© Copyright 2008 by Janet Conner.
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