The Bearable Lightness of Be-ink

A topic: atopic.

I noted in my previous post, dear readers, that my unsuccessful ink quest in London led to an attempt to console myself with a new razor from Trumper's on Jermyn Street. I have been coveting the Merkur 34C for some weeks, as my ongoing mission to turn my back on as many of the ways of modern life as possible recently led to secret experiments with a vintage Gillette double-edged razor. Because I am eternally clumsy, and because double-edged razors are often advertised as being 'for the real man', not prancing dandies, I have always kept a cautious distance from double-edged razor blades, fearing irreparable klutz cuts. But, on a quiet day several weeks ago when I was feeling unusually brave (the category 'real man' was still but a feeble dot on the horizon, though), I decided finally to cut loose and cut short my anxieties.

I was hooked on the Gillette and the double-edged blades within seconds, and I vowed immediately to raze every obstacle standing between me and a shiny new Merkur 34C. And so, dear readers, the morning after my return from London last week, I opened the enigmatic box and removed my new object of desire. Perhaps because I will never be a 'real man', perhaps because my limp wrist can support little more than a delicate bangle or a nosegay, I was immediately struck by the immense weight of the razor. According to this website, it's an almight 68g/2.4oz. But here's the curious twist: that heaviness actually makes for sheer lightness.

The key to shaving with an old-fashioned safety razor, it transpires, is to let the weight of the object itself do all of the work. There is no need to force the blade against and across the skin; simply rest it lightly, find the correct angle, and let gravity take over. I was amazed to find how light the movement of the blade thus became with my vintage Gillette; with the far heavier Merkur, however, magic seemed to be at work, for, although I held a hefty piece of metal in my hand, the ultra-sharp edge appeared to hover across my delicate flesh, which ended up feeling smoother than that of Baby Ink.

But what, I hear you cry, does any of this have to do with ink and fountain pens? Has Ink Quest cut its losses and fallen on its blade? Fear not, dear readers: there is, as usual, a link -- and this time it's a matter of lightness, of the lightness of being, of drifting, of atopia.

I have noted in previous posts how users of fountain pens and real ink are accustomed to writing with minimal pressure: while the common ballpoint pen requires the hand to press down firmly upon the paper, a real nib needs barely to touch the page to make its mark. Ink fact, most people are, because of the terrible hegemony of the biro, so used to writing with brute force that they would probably, if given an ordinary fountain pen from, say, the 1920s, damage or even break the nib within seconds. In our rush to embrace disposable writing instruments, we have disposed of the gentle embrace.

And yet, even though a fountain pen is designed to write lightly, to respond to the gentlest of gestures, many models are fairly heavy, particularly when considered alongside a plastic ballpoint. (Owners of the Pelikan M1000, the Cross Townsend, or the Aurora Talentum will, no doubt, be nodding in recognition at this point.) We're dealing with a pair of paradoxes, in other words: ballpoints are light, but make writing heavy; fountain pens are heavy, but make writing light.

It's here, I think, that my love of the weighty Merkur razor and my many hefty fountain pens begins to make sense. I've commented on earlier occasions about how my restless search for new ink is related to the fact that my dull job requires me to write for considerable amounts of the working week: an intriguing shade helps to keep boredom at bay, helps to keep the words flowing, helps to bring a sense of lightness to a sinking, dragging chore. I don't believe that I've ever discussed here, however, just how tedious I find the everyday act of shaving. No, let me correct myself: just how tedious I found the everyday act of shaving. What the heavy Merkur has brought to my days (with a little help from an ever-growing array of shaving soaps and creams) is further levity. Just as a heavy ink-filled fountain pen makes putting pen to paper a gliding joy, 68g of polished German metal allows me to face my face in the face of boredom.

It's tempting to say that I've taken another step towards utopia, but this is, I think, more to do with atopia. I say this because there's a lovely moment in Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes where my hero discusses the topic of the atopic. Here's the original French passage, followed by the official English translation:

L'atopie
Fiché: je suis fiché, assigné à un lieu (intellectuel), à une résidence de caste (sinon de classe). Contre quoi une seule doctrine intérieure: celle de l'atopie (de l'habitacle en dérive). L'atopie est supérieure à l'utopie (l'utopie est réactive, tactique, littéraire, elle procède du sens et le fait marcher).

Atopia
I am pigeonholed, assigned to an (intellectual) site, to residence in a caste (if not in a class). Against which there is only one internal doctrine: that of atopia (of a drifting habitation). Atopia is superior to utopia (utopia is reactive, tactical, literary, it proceeds from meaning and governs it).

The term that drives itself into me here is 'fiché'. Barthes' translator renders this as 'pigeonholed', but there are other connotations in French. 'Fiché' can, I believe, mean 'filed', as in 'filed in a card index', or to be 'put on file' by the police. And if you 'ficher' something into something else, you drive or stick it in. More colloquially, 'fiche-moi la paix' means something like 'leave me alone' or 'leave me in peace', while 'fiche-moi le camp!' could be translated as 'get the hell out of here!' or 'clear off!'. Finally, the reflexive form of the verb (se ficher) has further possibilities filed within: if you 'ficher' yourself in something, you become stuck in it, while 'se ficher de...' is to make fun of or not to care about.

There is a sense in which my entire life is one long cry of 'Fiche-moi la paix!' in the face of being fiché --pigeonholed, stuck, fixed in a file. The modern world, it seems to me, is one which actively discourages what Barthes calls 'drifting'. There is everywhere, to borrow a phrase from Barthes' friend and colleague Michel Foucault, an incitement to confess, to pin one's colours to a recognizable mast, to come out, to fly familiar flags, to live beneath labels, to render oneself fiché within clear categories.

Take my profession, for instance. Academics are supposed to specialize, to become experts within particular fields, and advertisements for jobs within universities almost always appeal to narrow areas of knowledge. I once met someone at a conference who took this to some kind of limit: all that he worked on, and all that he ever wanted to work on, were the letters of Virginia Woolf. He knew them off by heart, and he was able to date a stray phrase within seconds. He was master of his domain. One of my many frustrations with my job is the constant incitement to become fiché: I have no interest in being an expert on any subject, in writing more than one book on the same topic, in belonging to a 'school', or even in having a 'field'. (As I believe I've said before, George Steiner was right: fields are for cows.)

Beyond that, though, everyday life tries to draw us into a series of fixed positions: 'Which football team do you support?', 'Where are you from?', 'For whom are you going to vote in the general election?', 'For here or to go?', 'Mac or PC?', 'Are you into men or women?', 'Contract or pay-as-you-go?', 'Paper or plastic?' (do American supermarkets still ask this?), 'White or wholemeal?', and so on. Fiché, fiché, fiché.

Against which there is only one internal doctrine: that of atopia (of a drifting habitation). In this world of heaviness, of dull fixity, archaic objects such as fountain pens and double-edged razors spark a certain lightness, a delicate drifting, a sense of atopia. Fiche-moi la paix -- I'm lightening and lighting out for no territory.

Ink in use today: Noodler's Nightshade.

Capitalics

The Penquod has returned from its inky voyage to the capital, dear readers, and I present you with pen-related notes from my diary. Capitalics, if you will...

Thursday 19 November

I arrive obsessively early at the railway station, as I have a ticket that allows me to travel only a specified train. But the restriction has a silver lining: by doing things this way, I'm able to travel in the first-class carriage. (The university which I'm visiting -- and which is therefore paying my expenses -- invented this rule, presumably because pre-booked first-class tickets can be much cheaper than their 'open' counterparts.) I have never set foot inside a first-class carriage. (Well, I sneaked into one when I was a teenager, but I was quickly sent back to the cattle truck by the guard.) But before I can even think about what will lie ahead in the train (grapes fed to me by angels? at-seat grooming by a master barber from Truefitt and Hill?), I realize that my golden ticket gives me access to the mysterious First-Class Waiting Departure Lounge that I've often spotted while waiting on Platform 1. It's impossible to tell from the outside what luxuries lie within, so I grasp my ticket and make my way through the door.

The noise of the station immediately disappears, as does the cold morning air. My feet sink into impossibly deep carpet. I can smell coffee and, if I'm not mistaken, pastries of some kind. Smartly dressed business people sit in comfortable armchairs. Copies of The Times (ironed?) rest on a table. There are framed pictures on the wall. Before I can check whether or not one of the artworks is indeed an original Picasso, a woman materializes and asks to see my ticket. When she spots its golden hue, she smiles and offers me a drink. I consider asking for a dry martini, but decide that coffee would be better. My drink is brought to my armchair, and a basket of pain au raisin is pointed out. I indulge and await my train, feeling decidedly like George Costanza when, in an episode of Seinfeld entitled 'The Bizarro Jerry', he starts carrying a photograph of a model in his wallet and pretends that the woman in the picture is a recently deceased girlfriend, thereby gaining access to Manhattan's most exclusive nightclubs. This, I think to myself while a cherub plays a harp at my shoulder, is the life.

But, of course, the cloud soon emerged to cloak the silver lining that I had briefly glimpsed. Seconds after I have taken my seat on the train, a man sits opposite me. And gets out a mobile phone, a Blackberry, and an electronic book device. He has clearly been sent to annoy me for the duration of the journey to London. Seconds after the train departs, he's on his phone to, I assume, his secretary. 'I'm looking at my Blackberry', he says, 'and there's a complete gap between 2pm and 5pm yesterday. I can't believe that no one emailed me during that period. Can you check my inbox?' (If I had your email address, I think to myself, your inbox would have a message with the subject line of 'Moops!' in it.) And so, for a couple of hours, he plays with his electronic devices and talks to a farrago of idiots on his phone, while I read a real book and make notes with my fountain pen on Clairefontaine paper. I am, I realize, in Bizarro World. Opposite me is Opposite Me.

Later that day, the examination of the PhD goes smoothly, and the paperwork is brought to the examiners for signing. The other examiner looks as if he is about to hand me his rollerball so that I can add my signature, so I quickly arm myself with my Pelikan M200 and pretend that I haven't noticed. As I'm flamboyantly awarding the doctorate with Diamine Chocolate ink, I'm sure that he's looking at me and wondering why I snubbed him. (Would the evergreen 'It's not you, it's me' have been appropriate here?)

The evening ends splendidly when I meet old friend Nixon for dinner. To my surprise, another friend from the sepia undergraduate days turns up; I haven't seen her for something like five or six years. She asks why I'm dressed like a banker and, when I say that I wear and suit and tie to work because it annoys other academics, points out that I'm more contrary than ever. 'No, I'm not', I argue. 'Yes, you are -- you're like my father, who took up smoking when the ban came in, and started driving a Hummer when everyone switched to small, eco-friendly cars'. I met her father once or twice more than fifteen years ago; I make a mental note to set up a lunch meeting with him when I'm next in London.

Friday 20 November

I plan to wake at a leisurely hour, but, of course, even though Baby Ink is on the other side of Britain, my eyes open at his normal hour of rising. I work in my hotel room for a few hours, and then the shopping begins. (There is, of course, a moment of paranoia beforehand: I leave my luggage with the concierge and am given a ticket with which to retrieve it. The number on the ticket is exactly the same as the combination of the lock on my suitcase.)

My real mission is to find a bottle of Conway Stewart CS Green ink for honorary Penquod crew member, and so, after a brief browse in the wonderful Waterstone's on Gower Street, I stroll down Tottenham Court Road, turn onto Oxford Street, and make my way to Selfridges, where I've often been lucky with ink. (I bought my first ever bottle of Omas there, ink fact.) As soon as I arrive in the pen department, though, I sense that something has changed. After a few seconds, I realize that the once majestic section has been reduced in size. Some kind of beauty counter now occupies the space where, if I remember correctly, three or four large glass cabinets of pens once gleamed. I wander around in a daze, but cannot see any Conway Stewart products, so I ask one of the assistants. 'I'm sorry, sir, but we don't stock Conway Stewart at all', he tells me.

Shocked that one of Britain's most famous department stores does not sell one of Britain's most famous brands of pen, I make my way down to Penfriend in the Burlington Arcade. Before entering the shop, I admire the window display, where I spot one of the new brown tortoiseshell Pelikan M400s (which, to the best of my knowledge, aren't supposed to be available in the U.K.). It's truly a thing of beauty, but, as is so often the case in Penfriend, it sports an absurd price tag: £220. I ask inside if CS Green is in stock, and prepare to be offered a bottle for £65, but am told that Penfriend carries no Conway Stewart ink.

Leaving the luxury-filled space of the Burlington Arcade, I walk the short distance to Fortnum and Mason and climb the stairs to the small pen department. I've visited the shop on several previous occasions, but I've never actually been up to see the pens, so I am, when I arrive, delighted to discover that the legendary shop has thought to place the section in question next to the men's grooming products. 'Ink and pampering!', I squeal, and, once I've tried out some new scents and balms, make my way over to the pens. I immediately spot many gorgeous Conway Stewart models on display, so my hopes rise.

'Excuse me', I ask one of the frock-coat-wearing assistants. 'Yes, sir', he says, already treating me as if I were a prince. (I've often been called a queen, so I have related experience.) 'Do you sell Conway Stewart ink?'. 'Yes, we do, sir', he replies, already moving towards one of the drawers. 'Which colour would you like? Blue or black?', he enquires. 'Green, actually', I say, slightly disturbed that he thinks ink is as simple as blue or black. 'Oh, green', he says, startled. (Do I sense that he's looking for the panic button?) 'Let me have a look', he adds. 'Wait!', I say. 'I don't want green green; it's the darker CS green that I'm looking for'. He opens the drawer and shuffles some boxes around. 'I have brown -- but in cartridges', he says. 'No green of any kind, I'm afraid'. 'Okay, thanks', I say, and start to walk away. 'Sir!', he calls. I turn, expecting him to be holding a bottle of CS Green that was lurking at the back. 'Yes?', I say, my heart racing. 'We have just received a delivery from Conway Stewart, but I'm afraid that it won't actually make its way up to the shop floor until later this afternoon.' I, of course, have to catch a train shortly after lunch, so I leave Fortnum and Mason and realize that, Harrods aside (in the light of my time limit, Knightsbridge is a little too far away), the trail has gone cold.

I lift my spirits by investing in a beautiful new Merkur razor from Trumper's on Jermyn Street and then drown my sorrows with an espresso in Bar Italia, but a sense of disappointment remains: London has so much to offer, but I can't help feeling that it lags behind other major European cities when it comes to ink and pens. (Give me Paris any jour of the week.) There are, it's true, one or two pen small shops in London that I have yet to visit, and I'm returning to the city for a couple of days next month, so perhaps I should suspend my judgement, search again for CS Green, leave the tale of London undone. Watch this space, dear readers, to find out if the capital gains.

Ink in use today: Diamine Chocolate Brown.

L'undone

Almost undone before London.

The Penquod sets sail for the city of red buses and black taxis at the crack of dawn, and I have just finished packing my case for the trip. I have, of course, spent the last few weeks planning and replanning the pens and inks that will accompany me on the mission across the Severn, and almost as much time has been devoted to drawing up a list of shops to visit during my small amount of free time on Friday. (I know that academics like to say that they visit galleries and museums while away on business, but I'm happy to admit that I always head straight for the palaces of consumption. I once staggered back to a Parisian conference from an exceptionally long lunch with so many overflowing bags in my arms that it was suggested that I'd misread the title of the event as 'Où sont les magasins?' 'Have you been buying presents for your wife?', someone asked. 'No', I cheerily replied, 'this is all for me'.)

After gently closing my case, then opening it again to make sure that my pens and silk pocket squares were still safe, I sat down and congratulated myself on preparing so carefully and dandily for my voyage. But something in the back of mind was whispering to me: 'You've forgotten something...'.

I checked my belongings. (Two pens, two pocket squares, two ties, the new Philip Roth novel, the texts that I'm teaching on Monday, razor with new blade, special travelling shaving brush, special travelling lavender shaving cream, special travelling shaving balm, special travelling radio, special travelling sedan chair...) Everything seemed to be present and correct. I closed the case.

But the voice wouldn't leave me alone, so I lifted the lid for another inspection. And then I realized what was missing: the copy of the PhD thesis that I'm going to London to examine. And all of my detailed examiner's notes.

Yes, dear readers, I have once again come undone in the professional realm. I was on the verge of leaving for London without the whose existence is the very reason for my journey. My mind was elsewhere -- on ink and shallow trinkets, instead of on serious academic enquiry. When I should have been thinking about questions to ask the doctoral candidate in tomorrow afternoon's viva, I was actually planning how I would be spending my examiner's fee on the streets of London the following morning. Shopping so nearly shopped me.

I shall return soon, dear readers, with tales of the big smoke and, I hope, inky delights. Until then, viva shallowness!

Ink in use today: Diamine Chocolate Brown.
Ink selected for voyage: Diamine Chocolate Brown; Pelikan Blue.

PS: The street in which Ink Towers is situated will probably be a fountain-pen-only locale before the week is out. A fire in the telephone exchange box at the end of the road on Monday led to major repairs being undertaken on Tuesday ... but those 'repairs' were a little sloppy, as all of the houses now have the wrong phone numbers -- and the wrong numbers keep changing. Yesterday we had the number of the house four doors along, but now we're getting calls for someone who lives in a side-street that runs off ours. (I've just had a long conversation with a woman who's trying to find out how her friend's daughter is. 'She's been taken into hospital, you see', I was told.) I had to shout 'Serenity now!' on four occasions while trying to explain the mess to a call-centre worker in India this evening, who couldn't understand why my real phone number wasn't appearing in the 'incoming' box on her screen. 'But that's not the number I have in front of me', she kept saying. 'Yes, and that's why I'm ringing', I snarled. 'Someone else has my number!' 'But who, sir?' 'I don't know. He or she hasn't rung with the ransom details yet ... because no one can ring me unless they ring the number that belongs to Mrs Jones from down the road'. 'So where are you ringing from, sir?' 'My house!' 'But that's not what's on the screen in front of me, sir.' 'Yes, and that, as I just said, is why I am ringing.' It's clear that letters are the only reliable means of communication; telephones are not to be trusted. (I have known this for years, of course. My line was bugged when I lived in California. It would make little bleeps to itself in the middle of the night. And the FBI offices were just around the corner. I'd seen Three Days of the Condor; I knew what they were up to. 'Hello, Richard Milhouse Nixon speaking', I would say when answering the phone.)

Failing Better

The best inked schemes o' mice an' men...

I have often quoted Samuel Beckett's 'Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better' here, dear readers, because I spend my time contemplating my many failures (past, present, and future). Van Morrison sings somewhere about utter joy as 'that squealing feeling'; I am far more acquainted with 'that squalling failing'. If I try, I fail -- and fail again, fail better.

And one of my master plans has failed spectacularly since my last confession. I regularly complain about my job and my wider profession in these pages; I cannot remember the last time that I actually enjoyed entering the grey building where I work, and teaching remains what I like to call timetabled agony. With this in mind, I have been casually flicking through the employment pages in newspapers recently, not for a new position within academia, but for something completely different. The problem has been that, probably because Britain is deep in a recession, I have been unable to find anything. Yes, I could take a large wage cut and mop floors in the tax office, but I have an uncontrollable ink habit to support, so I cannot possibly consider lowering my inkome.

Last week, though, I came up with a brilliant idea, a perfect plan of escape from the ivory dungeon to La Vita Nuova. I believe that I have mentioned The Pen Shop in previous entries, dear readers. If you are new to Ink Quest and based outside the Untied Kingdom, though, the name may mean nothing to you, so allow me briefly to explain. The Pen Shop is a national chain of, well, pen shops. According to the company's website, there are twenty-eight branches within the UK, which apparently makes the firm 'Europe's leading pen store'. This isn't to say that every street corner in this green, unpleasant land features a Pen Shop. We're not talking Starbucks here, people. The stores tend, rather, to be found only in larger cities and airport terminals. (Well, I say 'larger cities', but there is the bizarre placement of a branch in Morpeth to consider. I have never been to Morpeth, so I have nothing against the town ... but I had to look it up on a map, and it appears to be a few streets near a main road. It looks a little out of place in the list of shops that includes London, Edinburgh, Cambridge, Birmingham, and so on.)

I have had some memorable visits to The Pen Shop. I bought a Faber-Castell 'perfect pencil' in Manchester. I picked up my very first bottle of Waterman Havana on Regent Street in London. I found the charming Caran d'Ache Grand Canyon ink in Birmingham. And I even once stood next to John Cale at the counter of the branch in Heathrow Airport's Terminal 4 (which seems now to have moved to the newer Terminal 5). I didn't recognize Cale by sight, and my initial thought when I heard his voice was, 'Oh, two Taffs standing next to each other in The Pen Shop. How odd'. But then I listened more closely, trying to pinpoint the accent. (Not Cardiff. Vowels all wrong. Further West? Swansea? No, too far West. Back a bit. Neath? Hmm, closer. Up a bit...) And then I could suddenly hear the voice saying, 'Waldo Jeffers had reached his limit', and I realized that I was in the presence of a former member of The Velvet Underground.

But, while I have these fond memories of The Pen Shop, I can't help finding the stores rather bland. (I need to be careful what I say here, of course, for fear of sending the author of Ravens March into another rage.) Yes, they usually stock pens that aren't seen very often on the high street in the UK (Pelikan, for instance), but they're rather predictable, sterile places. No one, I feel, goes to The Pen Shop to be surprised, to be swept away by something completely unexpected.

I, however, had plans to change all of that. Cardiff, the nearest large city to the faded retirement community where Ink Towers finds itself, has recently opened a large shopping centre, and the rumour is that, because not all of the units have been filled, subsidized rates are currently being offered to potential tenants. My idea, then, was to write to the CEO of The Pen Shop and ask to set up a branch in Cardiff. I had even drafted the letter (I have excellent social skills, love dealing with members of the public, and never lose my temper with idiots) and chosen the ink with which I would sign my name. But this would not be any old branch of The Pen Shop. No, my plan was to play along for a while ('Yes, I've ordered plenty of rollerballs for Christmas'), but then to go maverick ('Yes, that's right. I'd like nothing but Music nibs for the store from now on, and we won't be selling any black ink. Oh, and customers sporting a pocket square get a 50% discount. The Christmas display? No, no, no -- we don't have one of those; we have a Festivus aluminium pole.') I would become the Colonel Kurtz of the pen world.

Such mighty plans ... and such a mighty fall. On Sunday afternoon, the Family Ink made the long trek into Cardiff to do some shopping, and we wandered at one point into the new shopping centre. Baby Ink is going through a phase of pointing at every object in the world and asking, 'What's that?' (The conversation when I walk him to nursery in the morning usually goes something like this: 'Daddy, what's that?' 'That's a leaf.' 'Leaf ... Daddy, what's that?' 'That's another leaf.' 'Leaf ... Daddy, what's that?' 'Spaceship'. 'That's not a spaceship, Daddy.' 'Oh, you're right: it's a leaf.') And so, as we walked past all of the shiny new shops, I had to say their names for him. Suddenly, the conversation took a dramatic turn:

'Daddy, what's that?'
'That's ... The Pen Shop.'
'Pen Shop.'
'That's right, Pen Shop ... Pen Shop?!'

Yes, dear readers -- someone has beaten me to it. There is no mention of the branch on The Pen Shop's official website (twenty-eight is really twenty-nine, then), but it's there, where I was planning to open it. We went inside for a quick look ('Daddy, what's that?' 'That's my dream in tatters, son, my dream in tatters.' 'Dream in tatters. Fail again, Daddy'), but I couldn't bear to stay for long. Before we left, though, I did take comfort in the fact that the selection of ink is rather dull: Pelikan, Waterman, Sheaffer, Cross, and so on. (If you listen carefully, you can probably hear at this point a furious explosion occurring somewhere in Canada -- a place where ravens march.)

The future has no store in store for me. My dreams of escape have gone out of business. I suppose I'll just have to keep shopping around.

Ink in use today: Mont Blanc Racing Green.

PS: Ink Quest will fall silent for a while, dear readers, as the Penquod is off to London for part of next week. It's officially a business trip, but I am hoping, of course, to find a little time for shopping. Above all, I need to track down a bottle of Conway Stewart CS Green (not to be confused with Conway Stewart Green) for honorary Penquod crew member Anna. I think I'll give The Pen Shop a miss, but perhaps Pen Friend in the Burlington Arcade will be able to help.

PPS (13 November, 2.10pm): A note over at A Piece of Monologue about a review of two recently (and therefore posthumously) published books by Roland Barthes has made me realize that I completely forgot to mark the birthday of my great hero yesterday. (I think I had my eye on today, as it's the birthday of honorary Penquod crew member Eileen.) So, mon cher Roland, happy birthday yesterday (you would have been 94), and happy birthday today, ma chère Eileen. But here's something strange. Do you remember how I noted in my previous entry how I'd recently been contacted out of the blue by someone who taught me in the early-mid 1990s? Well, the review of the books by Barthes is by someone else who had the misfortune to teach me in those very same years. 'Everything is connected in the end.'

PPPS (13 November, 9.40pm): There's a lovely piece by James Fergusson about ink, calligraphy, and typefaces in the 'Freelance' column of this week's Times Literary Supplement. I can't find an online version for you, though, so I urge readers of Ink Quest to track down a paper copy as a matter of utter urgency.

Dear Me

Dear me.

Honorary Penquod crew member Ken has been in touch to pose a curious question about the situation described in my previous post. If, he asks, the Pelikan Blue that emerges from the nib is more than the colour that it will become over time (because of the fading I described), shouldn't we select our inks for their future properties, not their appearance in the present?

It's a good question, and I may have to rethink my entire relationship to ink. I'm used to focussing on what a colour is, not what it will be, and even less what it will have been. (Jean-François Lyotard notes somewhere that the future anterior -- what will have been -- is the tense of postmodernity; I hereby pronounce that it will also have been the tense of postmoderninkty.) Might there even be colour which I despise when it first settles upon the page, but which then slowly transforms into a shade to admire? Could I be forced to endure ugliness in the present for beauty in the future? I'm perfectly used to failure ('Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.'), but am I entering a stage where I have to aim wide of the mark deliberately? (I'm reminded at this point of something that I often see while playing with Baby Ink in the park. The children's area overlooks a small bowling green, where, in the summer months, I regularly catch sight of people in their smart white uniforms rolling black bowls gently across the grass. I'm fascinated by the way in which, because the bowls are not symmetrical, the players don't actually aim straight at the jack. The trick, as this handy YouTube video explains, is to master how the bowl curves as it travels.)

Writing, as I've noted in previous posts, always involves a complicated relationship between past and present. As soon as I make legible marks with my pen, I open a future for my inscription; it will be there for reading, for interpretation, at later moments, perhaps even when I no longer exist. (This is why Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida have all proposed that writing and death are inextricably linked.)

But I can now see, in the light of Ken's question, that matters are more complicated that I inkitially thought. Confronting my own mortality with each stroke of my pen is just the beginning (of the end); I also have to take into account the way in which the ink with which I am writing has a body that will decay, change, respond to the passage of time. I've been so caught up with my own dying that I've overlooked the dying of the dyeing agent. We're fading together.

The passage of time is on my mind for another reason, dear readers, for I received yesterday, out of the blue, an email from someone who taught me when I was an undergraduate a decade and a half ago. I haven't been in touch with him during the last fifteen years, so I was surprised when his email asked the following question: am I the author of Ink Quest? ('Is it you?', read the subject line of his message; I was tempted to reply with the phrase that George Costanza claims to have invented: 'It isn't you; it's me'.)

I have absolutely no idea how he put two and two together. (Memo to Anonymity Department of the Penquod: room for improvement.) My work email address is in the public domain, of course, as is my photograph, because I'm an employee of a public institution, so my professional, public self is no secret. But the subject who writes this blog has no name, no email address, and no identifying features. The two figures exist in different realms, different time zones (the Penquod switched to the decimal clock several years ago), different universes. They never talk -- or even write -- to each other. They don't even like each other.

This curious collision of past and present has, perhaps because it followed so closely the question raised by honorary Penquod crew member Ken, prompted me to consider the relationship between 2009 and my undergraduate years in the early-mid 1990s, when I was taught by the author of yesterday's unexpected email. Would he recognize me if I passed him in the street today? Am I the same now as I was then? And would I recognize him? I have a crystal-clear image in my mind of what he looks like, and I can hear his voice as if he were in the room now, but I have no way of taking the last fifteen years into account.

A regular feature in the Sunday Times sees public figures writing letters to their teenage selves ('Dear 16-year-old me'...); the younger self then gets chance to reply to the adult. (I don't know if I've explained that very well. Why don't you just click here to see the most recent example?) With yesterday's event in mind, I offer, dear readers, my own conversation with my selves:

Dear 19-year-old me:

- You have just arrived at university in the south of England. You are the first person anywhere in your family to go university. You have no idea what to expect. You were politely warned in your interview for the place that you would, because you attended a state comprehensive school on the wrong side of the Wye, perhaps stand out a little among the largely privately educated -- and largely English -- students. 'Do you think you can handle that?', you were asked. 'I can give as good as I get', you replied.

- You notice within the first week of teaching that everyone else seems to have been prepared for university by their secondary schools. They know what a 'bibliography' is, and they don't have to ask about the difference between a lecture and a seminar. This sense of not belonging where others 'naturally' belong will remain with you.

- You attend your first seminar. Your young tutor has also recently arrived at the university. He once taught in Poland. He quotes Marx; your teachers in school only ever quoted the rules. As the year passes, that seminar becomes the place where you first encounter some of the texts and ideas that changed who you are -- and that you now teach to the next generation of undergraduates. (You still have your copy of David Lodge's anthology of literary theory.) That same tutor will also, in time, introduce you to the world-altering fiction of, among others, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, and Herman Melville. You will never forget an in-class discussion of the opening paragraph of Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep. When Twin Peaks airs for the first time on television some weeks into the term, the series becomes a topic of conversation in seminars. At one point, your tutor invites the class to analyse the opening credits for clues relating to the identity of Laura Palmer's killer.

- You somehow discover that your tutor likes Van Morrison, whom you are pathetically trying to emulate on stages around the city. You discuss 'On Hyndford Street'; he tells you that there is an unreleased sung version to accompany the official spoken incarnation. You wonder why secondary school couldn't have been like this.

- Towards the end of your time as an undergraduate, your tutor gives you your first real break when he mentions an essay that you've written for his course to a colleague who is editing a book in a related area. The essay ends up in print, and you have no doubt that this persuades the state to fund your MA and PhD. Without that funding, you would not have been able to carry on.

- You pay no attention to the writing instrument used by your tutor, simply because you have yet to take an inkterest in such things. (Perversely, you have in your drawer the Parker 61 that your grandfather left to you when he died, on the understanding that you would take it to university, but you have not been able to figure out how to fill the pen, so you buy cheap rollerballs from the university stationery shop.) You will, in 2009, when your former tutor has miraculously identified you as the author of Ink Quest, conclude that he must have taught you for all those years with a fountain pen on the desk in front of him.

Dear adult Inkanthropist:

- Ink? Ink? Is that all I have to look forward to?

I don't know how long Blogger will exist; it's not made of real ink, so its permanence is open to doubt. But I have the handwritten version of this entry in one of my notebooks, dear readers, and I will now file it away and not revisit it until 4 November 2024, when I will, if I still exist, be in my mid-fifties. Dear me...

Ink in use today: Pelikan Blue; Omas Sepia.