Even beastly pens are fragile beings
I sat for an all-faculty meeting Wednesday afternoon. A gathering that takes place after a full day of teaching. My colleagues and I roll in tired, feeling varying levels of accomplished. Faculty sit in small aluminum desks on choir risers. Wednesday’s sit-down was the first such meeting of our academic year.
My head was elsewhere, thinking about family and mentally revising my lessons from the day.
I set my Gravitas Monster, the week’s dedicated daily driver — and an absolute banger of a recent acquisition — in the crook of my notebook for safe keeping while I reached out to snag a handout that was getting passed around.
Clack. Metal and acrylic on the riser three feet below. And an audible “Oh no!” from the good-natured colleague next to me. They rose and snagged napkins while I started cleaning spilled ink from the riser.
I recovered both pieces of my Monster, wrapped them in a backup shop towel I keep in my work bag, and wedged the pen upright in the topmost exterior pocket of my bag with the bag’s zipper.
Rest easy, you spectre of the inky deep
Even beastly pens are fragile beings.
This week’s Inked Tines update includes last week’s currently inked writing tools.
Toolset
Pens. The TWSBI 580-AL and its EF nib roared in off the proverbial bench after the Monster broke this week. I opted for a pen with a clip immediately following the sad events of Wednesday afternoon. I started the daily driver with a half fill on the expectation that a few weeks with the same ink will , aided by also journeying alongside me as my pocket carry. 2/5.
Gravitas Monster (EF) — Empty. A sizable #8 EF nib that grew on me during its month in my currently inked. RIP, dear Monster.
Mythic Aeschylus (BB). — Empty. The BB nib rapidly tore through a converter’s worth of ink. Smooth, tasteful feedback while writing. Excellent for accenting meeting notes and for scannable lesson outlines.
Cypress Casual A (Sketch, by Monty Winnfield). 1/3. Nostalgic Honey’s power shading highlights the strengths of the Sketch nib, which functions well as both a brush and a FM. Same uses as the Aeschylus above.
Nakaya Neostandard (B Naginata-togi, by Kyuseido). 1/5. A wet pen/ink combination. Dark green-black tones effectuated stealthy meeting notes throughout the week.
Carolina Charleston (Soft Vintage Naginata-togi, by Monty Winnfield). Full. Celadon Cat’s shading on Halos is strong enough to make reading challenging, but shades readably on Plotter paper. The pen/paper/ink trifecta in action.
Junlai 930 (B). 1/2. Enchanted Ocean shades smoothly and writes evenly, even on copy paper. The massive #9 nib works great for slower, deliberative tasks like annotations and journaling.
Notebooks. Work bujo. Plotter Shiranami (A5). Six new pages scrawled across the pages I lovingly snapped into my teaching Plotter. Three full-page lesson plan outlines, a two-page weekly task management spread, and one-third of a page of meeting notes.
The types of activities within the lesson run down the leftmost side in the Gravitas’ green-steel Sohayanotsuruki coloring. Details I want to surface within each activity are noted down the right-hand column in more colorful tones. The Cypress’ Nostalgic Honey denotes this particular lesson on Horace Miner’s excellent essay on the Body Ritual of the Nacirema.
Sweet principle analysis
I also took the Mythic Aeschylus for its final lesson planning ride Friday afternoon. Pumpkin Patch runs lighter until it ran scratchily-near-empty by the final debriefing activity. Just enough ink to wrap this introductory lesson on the Aztec Empire.
Orange is easy to read in quick glances while teaching
Journal. Musubi Tomo Halos (A5). Poetry was a refuge for me this past week. Four of the week’s five journal entries conclude with a transcription from one poem or another. Eleven pages in total. Four of which are half-filled with writing as I begin each new entry on a fresh page.
Poetry often mirrors my headspace better than direct descriptions. Adding a poem to the end of an entry is also a great excuse to swap pens mid-journaling.
You’re excused
All five entries were medium-length descriptions of my feelings. Writing out my feelings on events, rather than recounting the events, helps me to find shape. The shape of what I want. The shape of what I want to accomplish next.
The reflective power of “should”
Reviewing my journaling emphasizes that I favored B and M nib options throughout the week’s reflections. Wide lines made for prominent shading. Wide lines also fill up pages more quickly than would narrow line widths.
Broad and proud
Written dry. The Mythic Aeschylus ran empty Friday afternoon. The BB nib did its work rapidly drawing down the ink level.
Newly inked. I called the TWSBI 580-AL out of the pen case when I arrived home on Wednesday evening. A quick swap of the M Selvedge nib that was installed on the pen for my stock TWSBI EF rendered the 580 ready for daily driving service. Hoo-ah.
The collection
Incoming / new orders. I put out a call to the Pen Addiction Slack folks for possible Gravitas Monster replacements. The outcome of that call is substance for a future post. What I’ll say this week is: mail services have been chartered.
Outgoing / trades or sales. The Gravitas Monster broke after an unplanned fall this week. The barrel is unusable. That said, the filling mechanism, seal, and section/nib are all fully functional. A collection of parts for future repair or, perhaps, for a future custom build job. Putting positive vibes into the inky ether.
Currently reading and listening
Fiction.I finished re-reading John Scalzi’s Interdependency last week. I have a weakness for snarky, smart dialogue, which is one of Scalzi’s strengths. 46 pages in all.
I’m quite taken with my Boox e-ink tablet. It runs on Android and so gives me access to public library loans and private ebook servers alike. Evening reading without a backlight, so my partner can sleep soundly through my end-of-day nerdery.
Nonfiction. Jason Stanley’s Erasing History has slept on the right corner of my desk for months now. Unattended. September is a great time to break out the ol’ pencil and highlighters.
Music. Rainbow Kitten Surprise has visited, revisited, and rocked my speakers this week. Morning and afternoon commutes. Evening journaling sessions. A soundtrack while making dinners.
The band is a high-energy blend of rock, glam, and up-tempo beats. A cadre of solid musicians who are open to joking around with their music.
A word to the wise: some of Rainbow Kitten Surprise’s tracks are explicit.
