Is ink etymologically aware?
Colleague and honorary Penquod crew member Daphne called me into her office yesterday afternoon to relay some urgent news: she had been happily writing with her Sheaffer-Turquoise-filled fountain pen, admiring the delicate blue colour of her words, when the ink suddenly took on a life of its own. As she wrote the word 'Holocaust', she related, the ink changed from blue to brown ... and then back to blue again as soon as she began to form the next word in the sentence. She showed me the evidence. 'Holocaust' stood out on the page, the only non-turquoise mark in sight. Could I, she asked, explain the inkident?
I have known inks to change colour slightly if the pen is left uncapped and unused for several minutes. Waterman Havana Brown, for instance, often becomes a curious shade of green if the dormant nib is exposed to the air for a period of time. But I have never known a pale turquoise to become a burnt brown. Besides, Daphne had not put her pen to one side before the inkident occurred; she had, she said, stopped writing for no more than two or three seconds.
I have been thinking about this mystery all night; I have not slept a wink. I have weighed up numerous explanations for the dramatic eruption of the colour brown.
At first, I wondered if Daphne's pen was somehow connected across time to the Holocaust. Had its original owner perished in one of the camps, and was the nib performing an act of remembrance by highlighting the word? (Was it a Shoah show-er in certain words, in other words?) I quickly rejected this explanation when I remembered that Daphne's Sheaffer was purchased as new by her within the last couple of years.
I then moved on to a more prosaic hypothesis. Had traces of a previous colour of ink suddenly surfaced from within the pen and mixed with the turquoise to produce the brown? It's true that Daphne had been using a red cartridge before she switched to the blue, and it's also true that fountain pens are fond, if not thoroughly rinsed between colours, of producing some interesting new shades all by themselves. But I'm not sure that this explains yesterday's inkident. When Daphne showed me the sheet of notes, it was clear that 'Holocaust' had erupted in brown without the slightest warning or waning. The words on either side of the highlighted term were pure turquoise in colour; there was not even the tiniest hint of brown before or after 'Holocaust'. The emphasis was emphatic.
[NOTE: Dramatic reconstruction. Every effort has been made to preserve factual accuracy, but Penquod Productions Ink. has reimagined certain details.]
After hours of rigorous scientific contemplation, I finally discovered the root of the inkident: the root itself. 'Holocaust' and 'ink' are etymologically linked, cast together as words by '-caust', for 'Holocaust' -- which literally means the burning of all -- goes back to 'kaustos', the Greek for 'burnt', and 'ink' gets its name from 'encaustum', the caustic writing fluid used by Roman emperors, which in turn goes back to the Greek 'egkauston'.
My theory, then, is this: Daphne's turquoise ink (encaustum) became brown when she wrote the word 'Holocaust' (holo + kaustos) because of a sudden etymological collision. And the ink chose to register this fact performatively by making itself appear burnt (kaustos) upon the page. The inkident was caused, in other words, by -caust.
Now that I have solved the mystery, I can finally sleep. I am burnt out; I can burn the midnight oil no longer. These, dear readers, are the lengths to which I go to bring you the burning issues of our times. Thus ends today's burnt offering.
Encaustum in use today: Diamine Chocolate Brown.
PS (4.15pm): As I have mentioned in previous posts, the Sitemeter tracker attached to Ink Quest gives me regular updates on who is reading the blog. I never know precise identities, of course, but I do get information about geographical location, ISP, length of visit, and so on. I am alarmed to discover that someone at the institution where I work appears to be making his or her way systematically through the Ink Quest archive, sometimes spending up to forty minutes lost in my deathless prose. This can only mean one thing: my cover is blown, and I am no longer anonymous. I have little doubt that The Management is watching, taking notes, assembling the case against me, and plotting my sudden disappearance in an unfortunate 'accident'. If you never hear from me again, dear readers, I would like Chief Justice Earl Warren to lead the inkquest into the Ink Quest inkident.
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