Thursday 30 January 2003

There was nothing better on the earth that could write, he had often thought, than his Parker Vacumatic fountain pen, a brown-striped, gold-nibbed model made in 1934. It wasn’t him but the pen, gliding across the foolscap, filling in the vastness of the page with words that may not have meant all that much but which looked beautiful because of the personality and the infinite variety of their shape. ... The pen pushed him on to one word and another, creating a sudden and inescapable intimacy less between himself and So-and-So but between him and the page, and he mailed these letters off almost as an afterthought, and at that with a twinge of sorrow, because he would never see them again. —Jose Dalisay, Jr., “Penmanship” 10:12:35 PM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 R Allan Baruz. Last update: 2/13/03; 10:02:52 PM.