Why I Still Write With Ink on Paper

 

For one thing, I don't even know what a Remarkable or a Supernote is, to quote someone asking on Reddit why people still write in paper notebooks. I'm 61 years old, I'm a writer, and I resisted even using a typewriter until I saw the Internet in 1997. As with many other people, that changed things a bit for me, and I started using keyboards more than I had. But I still write a daily journal in ink in a paper notebook that fits in a pocket. Partly because I'm old, sure, but also for other reasons. 

I'm fascinated by other technologies besides pens on paper which are no longer generally considered cutting-edge. For example, mechanical watches: watches with no electricity, no batteries, powered by a spring. Revolvers as opposed to semiautomatics. Internal combustion engines, even though I'm a hair-on-fire climate activist. We should all be driving EV's or not driving at all. But I understand some of the resistance to change on this matter, the resistance which isn't built on ignorance, but on love for technologies which are being phased out. 

My brother, 59 years old, an automotive engineer and executive, tells me that offices often no longer have what we used to call office supply rooms: rooms full of paper and paper-related items such as pencils and pens and tape and staples.

So people our age are becoming odd, and started becoming odd long before we noticed it, I'm quite sure, writing in our paper pocket-sized notebooks with our fountain pens, which we clip in our waistcoat pockets alongside our pocket watches, sighting down the long barrels of our single-action revolvers while the barkeep fetches the ice-cream from the icebox for our sarsaparilla sodas, with our Model-T's idling outside besides the troughs, startling the horses. 

But there's more to it, and you don't have to be old to enjoy a good pen. I'm still very new to the pen and notebook subreddits, and so I still don't understand why everybody hates Cross pens. I still don't hate them. A two-piece Cross Bailey like the one in that picture, nice and heavy, with its rollerball and luxurious deep blue lacquer, nice and heavy, writing in a Zequenz signature notebook, is a sensual pleasure, a luxury many can afford, especially if they're no longer blowing money on gasoline. 

Cross Pens

 Dec 10

CNET is the new Consumer Reports, except a lot better. Look at all these reviews: the best cheap wine. Frying pans. They're not just electronics anymore. CNET is where I found these awesome blankets. Check this out: 7 pens, $14 to $575.

I'm surprised there aren't any Cross pens on CNET's list. Maybe that just shows I'm out of date. I got a Cross pen around 2005, about $20 or so I think. I still use it every day. It's basically indestructible. 

So, you know: don't give me a pen for Christmas. I'm set for life, and if a young person inherits my Cross, they're set for life.

 

Dec 31

I told you that I had had my Cross pen for decades and that it was pretty much indestructible. Which was true. So, naturally, about a day or two after that I lost it.

Got a new one from Amazon, but I didn't realize that not all Cross ballpoint pens are identical. Far from it, turns out! So the refills I had for the old one won't fit into this one. Also, the old one rolled open and shut, silently as a ninja. This one clicks.

You're thinking: it clicks. What, is that actually a problem?

Yes it is. A first-world problem.

And now, suddenly, I'm wondering about all sorts of things. There are some very wealthy literary families. People whose great-great-grandparents had Henry James and Turgenev over for dinner. Are their homes filled with veritable piles of Cross ballpoints, the way there were piles of Bic Stics at home when I was a child?

And this thought takes me a step further: would the thought of Cross ballpoints give brain-nausea to some of the economically-elite among the literary, because they still refuse to convert from fountain pens to ballpoints?

Dec 31

I know how important this topic is to you, so I'll be keeping you updated. 

I lost the old Cross pen, the one I'd had for decades, somewhere between Kroger and home. In Kroger I used it to cross items off my shopping list. And when I got home, it was gone.

My best guess is that it slipped out of my right front pants pocket, where I keep the Moleskine notebook, the pen and the phone. Hopefully it's somewhere here on the floor in the house or on the floor of the car, and I'll find it again.

I'm hoping to find it again, not expecting to. More likely it fell on the floor in Kroger, or on the ground in their parking lot, and it's gone.

So I was thinking: would the pen fit into the pocket of the Moleskine notebook?

It does. I wonder whether Bruce Chatwin kept a pen in the pocket of his Moleskine?

Bruce Chatwin was the douchebag over-rated travel writer who is responsible for Moleskines being known as Moleskines.

Moleskines are actually very good notebooks, and the Cross fits right into that pocket, so when I went to Kroger today, I wasn't so worried.

And I know that makes you very happy.