Someone asked on the Fountain Pen Geeks forum for “Fountain Pen Confessions.” Genius! Here are a few confessions, all true, and some a little embarrassing, as confessions should be.
1. I don’t really use the inks that are popular.
Super-saturated, super-dark inks are all the rage. Maybe add “super bright.” I have to confess I’m out of step there. Those types of inks haven’t been good for some of my nice pens. Moreover, I find them uninteresting. Give me shading, give me variation, give me something that invites and rewards close attention.
Yes, you probably will stop reading here.
2. I don’t care about cursive.
I haven’t used it since high school. With relief. Printing does the job just fine. The smart parents I knew were a little put out that our kids were taught cursive that instead of keyboarding, which most of us use daily.
You definitely will stop reading now. Which is good, because …
3. I think fountain pens (which I love) are just things.
“Do I contradict myself? / Very well, then I contradict myself, / (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”
I really like fountain pens, and I spend a lot of time using them and talking about them. Even writing about them here. But there can be a degree of fetishism about fountain pens and ink that turns me off, not to mention cupidity and its sibling greed.
This is just stuff. I love some of my stuff. I keep finding new stuff that I love, too. And I would throw it all overboard, in a second, for any person I know.
And I don’t think those are contradictions.
Sigh. Sometimes I think we should all just read poetry instead.
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Image courtesy of The Tango! Desktop Project
Fountain Pen Follies 
I absolutely agree with everything you’ve said! Excessive consumption in the west only serves to reduce the pleasure that is derived from being limited to a handful of items.
Maybe it’s just because I will never be able to afford (or justify) spending hundreds or thousands of pounds (or dollars) on a pen collection like some in the FP world obviously do, when all that happens is you end up with drawers full of items you never use from one year to the next!
Isn’t it better to only have a few pens/inks and gain pleasure from using them all on a weekly basis?
Sometimes less really is more….especially when it comes to mere objects…..when the money and passion would have been better spent on helping others around us.
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Yes, yes, and yes 🙂
If I wanted saturated I’d use gels or markers (sharpie *shudder*). And calligraphic/standard cursive =/= joined-up writing (also, knowing either does not make a person smarter/morally superior/more educated. sheesh people!). And I *do* use cursive, and am glad I got to learn it.
As to the last – so true. There’s a minority (however sizable and vocal, I hope it’s a minority) of FP users who seem more into looking for opportunities to look down on other people and their experiences, than into swapping ideas so all can learn and discover. Basically, they’re not in it to make pen friends, but pen cliques: the question of who gets excluded and how is at least as important as who gets included. (also, poetry is nice, but it’s another milieu that’s crawling with d-bags, prolly worse than pens *augh*)
aaand that’s all way too heavy for a Sunday night 😛
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