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The Pen

-          A female Swan*

What would happen if a pen were to loose its creative potential?
Is a pen capable of loosing its creative potential?
For a pen is but a tool...an extension of the writer, a means to creation.

But what if the pen had its own ability to express...Its own stories to create and tell?
After all each pen affects our handwriting. It adds its own characteristics to it. The manner in which it moves over the paper...the friction it creates...the flow of its ink.
The pen might flow like an ebullient stream...gushing through the pages, or it might be like a recalcitrant child...kicking and screaming its way across the lines. It might turn on the nib in a languid pose, indolent, as it speeds across...or it might take its time, in slow contemplation...mulling over each word...or laboring in the exquisite finish of each letter.
All come together to form the handwriting...along with the writer of course!
A person’s handwriting will have its own consistency, yet each writing will carry the distinctiveness of the pen with which it’s written.
However, what if it wasn’t just an influence on our writing that the pen exerted, but also prompted stories within us to be written?

I, right now, was making acquaintance with a pen...a fountain pen!
My pen? Am not sure I could claim it as my own, for I had bought it as an undeliverable parting gift to a failed relationship.

A relationship, which had shown tremendous potential and possibilities even as it seemed to lift off from a dream. Like a Pen* of enchantment with great gossamer wings of hope...plumed in iridescent feathers containing hues of hope and creativity. A relationship, which I had felt, was ‘the’ relationship that was meant to be.

But, before the relationship could even take off, it faded away into nothingness. That which was once as tangible as a warm rug on a cold winter night turned out to be just a chimera. This relationship, like many other relationships that happen betwixt people around the world, had fallen prey to the dreaded predator ‘Fear’.

Somehow all the promises it held...all its expectations...all its potential dreams...couldn’t pass muster, to the barrage of doubts that the dreaded duo, ‘Hard Reality’ threw its way.

Somewhere down the line I had sensed a withdrawal, in my swan princess, for to her the questions were too many, and too few answers, which offered the right guarantee card. After all, until Shrek, no Fairy Tale ever talked about ‘happily ever after’ with an Ogre. There were no ready answers to be had, other than walking down the path, and to have the risks of unearthing the ‘wrong’ answers to these barrages of queries, after having launched herself into the relationship, proved to be a bit too unnerving for her.

After all a mere emotion like ‘Love’ merely gave promises and held within its folds, very few answers.

It was better to desist travel rather than land up at potentially unknown and unfavourable halts.

At this juncture, rather than pull and prod, I too decided to let go. For I do believe that the partnership is best entered on ones own will, rather than due to hard sell, for the long run demands commitment more than enthusiasm.

But where does a pen, a fountain pen fit into the story?
Well parting is never easy, and is even more so, when you never meet face to face to say good bye. So, though I’d never get to gift it, I thought I’d buy a parting gift all the same. A farewell ritual to bring to end a chapter...and move on.

But why a fountain pen? Well possibly, in this day and age of disposability and convenience, it is an anachronistic reminder to longer usage. A symbol of the creative potential of all relationship. A reminder that it requires fresh refill for renewal.
But the real reason as to why I chose the pen, related to a vision I had of the relationship right at the beginning, which I had hoped wouldn’t prove to be fatalistic.

In the vision I saw, my swan princess, standing in the centre of a bridge looking down at the river flowing beneath with a fountain pen in her hand. Her mind occupied with thoughts. Thoughts? Nay worries. A slay of ‘what ifs’ assailed her mind.

“What if the ink ran?”

“What if the dress got stained?”

“What if the stain couldn’t be removed?”

“What if people laughed at me?”

“What if...?”, “What if...?”, “What if...?”

And thus, standing at the edge of the bridge, she emptied the pen off all its ink into the flowing water of the river. Relieved at having the dilemma resolved in her mind, she walked off...when the questions struck her yet again:

““What if I had written with it?”

“What if I had expressed myself?”

“What if I had penned down those lines which sings through my mind?”

The ink, which was so much a threat a moment back, now seems fraught with potential. She turns back, as if to retreat to that moment, but by now that moment, along with the ink, was water under the bridge.

Guess a fountain pen, like a relationship, can be perceived as a threat or a blessing, depending on whether we intend to show it off in one's pocket or intend to create with it.

Thus, as an apt memento to the relationship, the fountain pen, from a dusty over looked corner of a stationery store (for who buys fountain pen these days?) found its way to my pocket.

Even as I sat it contemplation I realized that if I were to use it just as a symbol of the relationship, I would be doing to it injustice. For all its creative potential remained unexploited. It wasn’t something, which was just to make a telling point, but was in itself a seed of creative expression.

So, solitary in my pen of pain, I sought down to start a new relationship with this anachronistic piece of writing instrument.

It scratched and wheezed as it started, taking tentative steps to writing, but soon it was raring to go...gamboling with the glee of a child who has been brought out from the confines of a play pen to be let out in the open meadows.
I couldn’t claim it as my own, but it quickly lay claims on me, smudging my finger tips with ink. And off it started a new relationship, by penning this paen on relationship.

For what makes relationship? Beyond the two entities involved in it, I guess what makes a relationship is also a bit of magic! A magic which demands a certain responsibility and commitment to stay with the relationship and in its absence the relationship is gone, and what might remain is forced proximity. Much like pen to paper, it’s the words which are created which is magic, not by pen staying close to the paper.
And each pen and paper holds a promise of a magic, which can only be made in partnership, by way of the words they weave, but a magic which is never be yours to claim if had readymade.

Also like the ink on paper, untended in the river of life, it flows to have its words dissolved to nothingness even as ink separates from paper...

The relationship is gone, but I’m left with this pen. A pen might be mightier than a sword but is greatly diminished as a proxy for a person. Yet as they say, ‘Que sera...sera!’ What will be will be!

I think the next time I go out, I’ll buy myself a bottle of ink. Am getting used to the idiosyncrasies of this pen and feel that with it there are expressions to unearth and emotions to keep and many a words to pen before I sleep...

Avi

9 Kommentare 23.8.04 11:27, Comment