That pen is toast

December 18, Dorris Ranch

I had an ultimate pen once, a Waterman fountain, with five bottles of ink, including black, brown, red, blue, and green—but with fancier names. I loved that pen and used it for hundreds of pages—freewriting, journals, letters, and doodling. The ink was water soluble, and I learned the hard way that if the paper got wet, the writing smeared and disappeared into a blur. NOT the kind of pen and ink to address mail with! This was back in the 1990s, and eventually I drifted away from writing with my fountain pen. It sat unused for years. I did revive it early in my typewriter collecting phase (2017), but then it sat again. At some point the mechanism for drawing fresh ink into it failed, broke. I think I'd let it go dry once too often. Or it just wore out after lots of use. A decorative piece on the end of the pen had also fallen off by then. Anyway, though I still have the parts in a ziploc bag, that pen is toast. I just wanted to write about my ultimate pen on the penultimate day of 2024. Thank you for reading.