This Little Monument

I have never found a decent pen to work with – like the blacksmith having no good hammer – like the cobbler having no good stool or leather. Just this morning I tossed three pens with a dart-throwing motion into the trash can, my frustration finally taking action. I am so tired of this quest for a good pen.  So I'm using a pencil I rediscovered in my drawer, the Palomino 2B, supposedly the next best thing to the now collectible but defunct Blackwing 602 which Steinbeck had sense enough to choose after a two-month pencil search before beginning his East of Eden. Once Steinbeck determined the Blackwing was worthy of his project (though they were the most expensive pencil at the time, 50 cents each), he ordered four dozen of those graphite tools per month – worth a medium sized fortune today when considering that each pencil might go for $35-$50 on eBay.

He wrote this to his editor while on chapter four of East of Eden: “I just looked up and saw how different my handwriting is from day to day. I think I am writing much faster today than I did yesterday. That gives a sharpness to the letter. And also I have found a new kind of pencil – the best I have ever had. Of course it costs three times as much too but it is black and soft but doesn’t break off. I think I will always use these. They are called Blackwings and they really glide over the paper. And brother, they have some gliding to do before I am finished. Now to the work.”

They say this Palomino 2B (or the HB, but not the B, H, or 2H) is the next best thing to the Blackwing 602 which went out of production in 1998 when the eraser crimping machine broke. It’s not as waxy across the page, I've noticed; I have to sharpen it after every paragraph, and the smell is not so transporting -- even though they say it's made of California cedar – but it’s smooth, soft and dark, and better than all the pens I’ve tried. I'm ordering one dozen Palomino 2B pencils today -- about a dollar each including the postage -- and I'll write with pencils from now on.  

I’ve got a few Blackwings I’ve procured for myself or received as gifts over the years -- and I've always used them because I believe a collectible is not worth anything if you can't enjoy it -- so I’ve got several that are half-used or reduced to stubbles.  But – I enjoyed them. It's truly the best pencil ever made, smelling of strong cedar and long ago times when freshly caught salmon was smoked on freshly felled wood and leaves. I can hear drum beats when I use the Blackwing 602 . . .

I leave these stubbles to lie around my house where I might see them or pick them up for use as accent writing – that is, underlining or making brackets and stars in books I’m reading along the way.  Sometimes I just sniff them. And I always remember that I enjoyed these pencils – much as an old man might look at portraits of women he has known, or maybe at cigar boxes he has been left to ponder – or as an old woman might look at the tins of fine tea she has sipped of a Sunday afternoon . . .

I remember when cleaning out the kitchen cupboards of my mother’s house soon after she had died, and I saw a little monument of tea saucers which she had hidden all the way in the back corner of an uppermost shelf – they were wrapped in a bit of yellowed tissue paper, probably from a gift she'd received nearly 40 years before – and I unwrapped that little monument of saucers, shuffled through them with two hands and carefully spread them out like a game of solitaire upon the kitchen countertop in front of me – and I saw the designs of each, like seeing photos of deceased relatives, their familiar features and would-be smiles coming to life within memory – and I looked up to see if there were any cups to match – and there weren’t – and that is when all became clear to me, that my mother had used her fine English bone china teacups in the same way I used my Blackwing 602’s – to enjoy them. They were the only nice things she ever had, gifts from my father for each of the 39 wedding anniversaries they had together before he died.

These stacked saucers are like the stubbles of my Blackwing pencils – a testament to what she enjoyed – because in the enjoyment of things we love, we use them up – or break a few.