Day 59 of 365 Pens

I will need to get back to the story about the house on Clemens Street and the party soon. But I warned you I have struggled to write this tale. Details about living in the collapsing Catholic commune and then with the band “Free Cheese” say so much about my shortcomings and my lack of focus at that time. Digging into those issues make it hard to write. Truth be told the profane nature of the whole experience is also somewhat hard to capture. I have read portions of the scroll version of “On the Road” and I just can’t go there. For today I will just focus on something else. Whatever I talk about today will not be about the unceasing, unending, ever accumulating snow of this the winter of 2013-2014.

 Sitting alongside my computer are a box of G2 Pilot pens. Don’t know why but I love opening up a box of these pens. Pens are peculiar, each person has to find the one that works for their hand and their style, kind of like picking a wand in the Harry Potter books. I through the years have gone through different times when I found a pen that I thought was my pen only to after a while see it shortcomings. There was a Uniball pen that I used to really like, the ink flowed easily and it was crisp and vibrant on the page. But the ball in the point would eventually pop out as you were writing and leave a long smear. And they had a habit of cracking the length of the pen and leaking.

 These G2 have a cushion grip and come in a blue ink, a power ink. The flow is just as smooth but I never really have ball point failure. They don’t leak but one should not leave a G2 in his pocket and then do the delicate laundry. One might on at least two occasions have to go buy his wife a new wardrobe. Other people like these pens to.

When someone comes into my office and needs to draft a note I often end up lending them my pen. Whoosh, there goes another 79 cents of my money. So about once every two months I have to go to a mega store and buy a big box of them. When I look there and see the unopened box I see potential. I see all the unwritten stories that I have within me. I see the grocery lists I will use checking off each item one by one. I see the checks I will write to college and educations programs and to the basic day to day bills that each of us hard working stiffs have to pay.

 A box of pens or months of life to be lived going forward, you decide what I am really looking at here.