fountain pen – Page 5 – Deborah Makarios

December 7, 2013October 19, 2023

In Praise of Old Technologies

A bit of a oxymoron, I know, but in these days of planned obsolescence, last year’s technology can be dismissed as ‘old’.

Now, I’m no pitchfork-wielding Luddite demanding a return to the good old days before the Industrial Revolution. It would make it harder to have a blog, for a start. But I do think there is a case to be made for some of the old technologies.

Take my sewing machine, for example. (Please don’t – I’m using it.) It was made soon after World War II by Japanese craftsmen, in an early example of the time-honoured principle of using someone else’s idea and selling more of it (the idea in this case being Mr Singer‘s).

It is largely composed of cast iron and weighs about as much as a moderately-sized child. I wouldn’t call it indestructible, but if I dropped it on the floor I’d be more worried about the floor than the machine.

The best thing about it is how relationally-friendly it is. OK, the marketing guff on modern machines probably talks about how quiet they are instead (it’s a shorter word, to begin with), but the result is the same. And I’ll bet mine’s quieter. I can have it running at full speed (i.e. as fast as I can turn the handle) and still keep up an audible conversation. In a whisper.

Not to mention my machine is about as old as the oldest surviving member of my family, and is still in perfect working order. Look so good when you are sixty, you will not, o sewing machine of today!

It isn’t just sewing machines. I’ve mentioned before that I write with a fountain pen (more than one, in fact). I wouldn’t give one to a five year old, perhaps, but once you’ve mastered the art of writing, using a fountain pen is not all that esoterically difficult. And it’s beautiful, fun, and better for the environment – same as the sewing machine.

And then there’s the candle-lamp with glass shade I inherited from my grandmother. No naked flames, so it’s fire-safe, but it provides enough light for me to read by. Again, there is no obsolescence, planned or otherwise. As long as they keep making machine needles, candles and ink, I’m set.

Of course, there are those who are all for the new and shiny and can’t imagine why someone would see value in the pre-penicillin era. Well, we’re rapidly approaching a post-penicillin era, so at least I’ll fit in.
And when the fossil fuels run out (or the price is more than most can afford), will my life be obsolete? No. I’ll be sewing, writing or reading, by the light of my candle-lamp – just as I do now.

What’s your favourite ‘old technology’ – or would you like to make a case for the new? If you’d like to make the argument for no technology at all, get off the internet, you hypocrite! That aside, all comments welcomed – have your say.

November 24, 2013

November: A Sense of Autonomy

How did it get to be the end of November already??
The year is just flying past, and the Artist’s Way chapter 11 is already inviting me to take a look back over how far I’ve come.

Before the year’s end I want to read through all my posts again, but in the meantime, I’ve considered how much change has occurred since January. Looking back, it’s actually quite a lot, although it didn’t seem so at the time – rather like not noticing the rings forming on a tree trunk.

I have a blog. (But you knew that.)
I write regularly. It started as morning pages and irregular blog posts; now I post regularly and have a whole day each week set aside for writing.
I take myself seriously as a writer. It isn’t just a hobby I do in my spare time when I feel like it.

I feel less anxious and guilt-ridden about Getting Things Done – still something I struggle with, but I’m learning to lighten up, without becoming totally irresponsible.

I am more generous with myself. Giving to others was a no-brainer, but with myself I played the “I bet I can carry on without that” game, instead of actually considering whether it was a good idea. For myself I had an automatic ‘no’. I was Scrooge.

I don’t mean to suggest that more is better and you should fulfil your every whim, but sometimes you lose more by going without than you gain. In the spirit of which, I had an enjoyable struggle with the AW exercises on self-nurture, over six months and during one week.

In the longer term, I plan to reward myself for finishing the current WIP draft with a new fountain pen (droooool). I also want to learn to crochet.

While I was off work sick, I managed to read nine Agatha Christie novels, three Ngaio Marshes, and two Patricia Wentworths. This was so relaxing and refreshing I had the brilliant idea of setting aside a day every now and again to do nothing at all but read. Perhaps once a month?

My nurturing week includes classic things like a movie or an icecream, and simple things I enjoy like having a nice sit-down afternoon tea, or going to a charity shop to try on hats. I may also buy a magazine – no magazine in particular – and go through it for pictures to put in my scrapbook.

The Artist’s Way also challenges us to reconsider our understanding of God, particularly in the area of creativity. I have realized lately that I need to learn to trust God more and trust his dreams for me.
After all – look how far he’s brought me already.

Exercise 5 invites us to list the ways we will continue to change as we allow our creativity to grow and flourish. My very scientific projections suggest that I will become more relaxed, more joyful, more enthusiastic, more energetic, more generous – and more productive.

A little scrap of joy to end: sometime in the last month someone somewhere entered the words “blancmange pen” into their search engine – and they found me. My life has not been in vain.

Until next week, whether life brings pens or blancmange,
Sinistra Inksteyne

November 3, 2013

Goals and Incentives

Strange how memories forgotten for years can suddenly return with such intensity. This week I have been remembering a newspaper cutting I had on my wall as a girl, which was on the subject of setting and achieving goals.

I remember the paragraph which said to list What’s In It For Me – taking the pragmatic if somewhat un-altruistic view that you couldn’t set goals which only benefited others.
I remember the remarkably bad posture [straightens back] of the young people in the illustrations, who appeared to have been genetically modified with turtle DNA (and not the ninja sort, either).

But before either of these I remembered the feeling of order, perhaps even control, which the cutting gave me. I could set goals, break them down into steps, and then achieve them, at least in theory. I could accomplish things.

For some reason (early exposure to the classics?) I always wanted to be accomplished. To my chagrin, I live in a modern society which does not really go in for accomplishments, and therefore gives me nothing to measure myself against (rather like modern manners).

There is of course always Miss Bingley’s definition: “no one can be really esteemed accomplished, who does not greatly surpass what is usually met with. A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages, to deserve the word; and besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half deserved.”

I have a smattering of modern languages, and my posture is at least better than the teenage turtle-mutants in the clipping. Let us draw the curtain of charity over my abilities as to the rest. I might do slightly better in Mr Darcy’s estimation (“to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading”) were it not that he expected all the rest as well. An accomplished lady of the Regency, then, I shall clearly never be.

Well, never mind. Mr Darcy isn’t a patch on the Caped Gooseberry anyway.

The resurfaced memories did make me think again about motivation and goals. While working toward a larger goal, it can sometimes be necessary to motivate oneself in the short term. Never mind what’s in it for me next year, I want to sleep now!

Sometimes it pays to use the carrot instead of the stick, to provide yourself with a few extra incentives. For example, if I manage to write 4,000 words tomorrow, I can go and buy a new exercise book.

To be fair, I’m making a virtue of necessity in this case, as if I write 4,000 words there won’t be room in my current book for another Monday’s worth of words. But buying a new one will be enjoyable just the same.

When I finally finish the first draft of my WIP, I might buy myself one of these to celebrate.
Do you detect a certain stationery orientation in my incentives?

I admit it – I love stationery. As a child of six, I kept an envelope full of blank strips of paper in my room. They weren’t even cut straight, but there was something indefinably pleasing about them. I used to take them out and fan them through my fingers. (Weird kid? Yes. Point?)

Pens, paper, ink – I love them. And if that love can spur me on to keep writing when The End seems unimaginably far away, then even better.

What are your goals? And what are your favourite incentives? All correspondence welcomed.