Skip to main content

…with pen in hand.



Pen and paper… the tools of lovers, poets, writers, or anyone valuing the delicacy, seduction, and power inherent in language and expression.

Gone are the days when touching pen to paper united sender to receiver, with every letter, a stamp of palpable emotion. With each symbol formed, a reflection of the sender’s soul was imprinted, allowing the receiver to feel all the closer for it.

No longer do we feel the character and emotion of the writer through the shape of a word.  Today we text, we email, missing the blemish of a fallen tear, a sinuously formed sentence, or the fury of an irregular slant. In a world where it is easy to misinterpret the message without the assistance of script laden with intangible, yet felt emotion, we need to work all the harder to express our hearts.

When writing with pen in hand, there is a sense of limitless time. We luxuriate in the formation of a thought, scribbling it down furiously or painstakingly applying each letter to create the sentence that corresponds. When we write a handwritten note or letter, we are saying that we value this time where we can sit and make tangible our thoughts in a way that is commensurate with the value of the receiver.

Perhaps the best gift you can give a friend or a lover is the gift of a classically designed fountain pen. In doing so you say you value a deeper kind of communication, and that you have faith that he or she is up to the task. By honoring someone with this confidence, you are saying the friendship and love you share speaks of its own eternity.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

I am a Turtle

Its always the beginning that is different, and even when disguised by excitement of the new and fresh, it challenges. Adjustments to having no root, even in the face of being the Turtle, where everything I need is here, beneath my shell. And this shell, not hard to penetrate, but instead welcoming, inviting new friends in, new loves, new sensations. But I am the newcomer and even if the people around seem welcoming, there is history to be made here, and this comes to haunt late at night when alone in a tiny bedroom in a house that isn't mine and in a land where there are no known references to pull from. And so a sudden nostalgia. Things back home look delicious and much more favorable. That little brownstone pad in Brooklyn with a local cafe around the corner, and good friends just a phone call or a subway ride away. This, even knowing that I'm going to give this new city in another country a real shot. Plans. Not just to find another place to live here, one whe...

Tango

Marvelous Night for a Moondance for www.argentinastravel.com So there I was—a more-or-less intermediate level tango dancer, with all the bravura that a lifetime of other dance techniques has given me, which means the tendency to show off when I don’t know what I’m doing. I was in a very popular class of what is conveniently called “ nuevo tango ,” signifying that everyone is young and experimental and in this case, pretty good. We were learning some complicated steps and finding new possibilities with each different partner and I was trying to hold my own along with everybody else. After the teachers demonstrated the next sequence, I looked around for my next partner. I felt someone standing next to me, waiting for me to turn and catch his eye. Dirty nails, fraying socks, greasy hair, bad teeth - there he was, my next potential partner, shooting me a charming, inviting, cocky smile. With a confidence completely unfitting to his appearance, this scruffy mix of pira...

Cold Cafe

It was so cold. Like every day. Grey and cold and if you turned the wrong way, a vicious slash would slap you across the face. But she went out without a hat because it was now April. It was her first year in Berlin. So many things here were a first. The roommates. The language. The change in her career. But she was fine with it all, nomadic and adapting. The only thing that rankled was the lack of a man. The cold weather was bringing it on, this need for a warm body to press up and into. She was exploring streets. She’d heard of a café and found it quite near to where she liked to go. It was small and the coffee was as good as they’d said. She sat facing the wall near the door, reading.  Two women and a man entered. One woman was older, perhaps her age. The other, young, and the man was probably hers. He was lovely and they spoke French. She observed, as she does, rating his beauty over her coffee and book. He didn’t appear to notice. T...