Happy Fountain Pen Day

Happy Fountain Pen Day! It’s a thing. Is it a made up thing? What is not made up in this world? It is a thing.

We are celebrating these delightful tools of simple technology that are both practical and magical—the best combination possible. How satisfying to feel the pen on the page, when it’s flowing smoothly! What stories and images have been conjured in the meeting of pen and paper!

The accompanying tools of students and writers and wizards for many moons past, and here we are in the future, with our bright screens and our wandering attention spans, and still using these fountain pens in an effort to slow down, to find inspiration, to have a bit of joy. It’s hard to go back to ballpoints and gel pens after you begin the rituals of filling a pen from a bottle of ink, of feeling the liquid streaming out in dark, crisp, wet lines.

There is a fountain pen and ink and paper for everyone, and all the permutations to explore and get lost in. It’s part of the joy of it, the hunt for the right ink, the eager waiting for a new edition of a pen. But mostly it’s the comfort of the familiarity of pen that you’ve known for years and that will write for you just the way you like.

It’s been a while since I discovered fountain pens, or fountain pens discovered me, and it’s fair to say that they’ve changed my life. Who would I be without fountain pens? They are little soldiers awaiting their adventures from the comfort and jostle of my pen case, resting empty in my drawer, forlorn and lost in the bottom of my bag. Over these next few years, some of these may wander away from me, a gift or my own disorganization, but others I think will be my companions for life.