My Mont Blanc Pen

Mary Harycki

I remember how I started using fountain pens.

This Mont Blanc is the latest one I bought

at Daly's Pen Shop

just off Plankington.

(They sell all the best writing instruments from around the world,

and I haven't lost the last ones I bought there yet!)

This Mont Blanc is bright yellow.

There was another for sale in a shocking orange!

All Mont Blancs used to be black.

I once bought the largest one which was easy to fill:

you just dipped the pen in an ink bottle and twirled the top.

I lost that one long ago, along with another maroon Mont Blanc

when I was in Paris, and stopped to change some dollars to francs.

I went back and asked the owner if he had found it,

and he said "Non," but I just knew he had kept it.

The French recognize the value of a Mont Blanc.

I look at the yellow one and I don't understand it.

It has the Mont Blanc symbol on the tip --

a small white image reminiscent of a snow-capped mountain --

and it writes perfectly.

The most beautiful pen I own

is made ofmother-of-pearl,

with three squiggly black lines

running down the sides.

The nib is 14-carat gold, of course.

It is wonderful

to write with an instrument

from which words flow almost effortlessly.

I expect the Quill Pen must have taken more effort.

(Pity poor Shakespeare and Marlowe, rewriting their fifteenth draft.)

I refilled all my newest pens yesterday.

I filled the yellow one with ink and not a cartridge!

(I have cartridges, too, as a backup,

for when I am taking notes at a lecture

or learning something new,

like who invented the fountain pen,

which I jot down to remember.)

At Daly's they help you refill your pens.

I brought them a bunch of fountain pens tied together with a rubber band.

They all needed cartridges, and the lady who has always waited on me,

and knows what I favor,

very politely got all the right cartridges for the right pens,

and filled the pens, too,

after washing them completly until there was no residual ink.

She used a rubber band to put the cartridges together with the right pen.

I bought a few new pens, too,

and a bottle of Mont Blanc ink

in a light, lovely sapphire blue.

I've bought Carrier's, Lamy's, Schaeffer's, Waterman's, Mont Blancs, Penguins and others.

I've always loved writing with fountain pens.

The Mont Blanc is the premiere fountain pen.

I am using the yellow one right now.

All my pens have very fine points.

I always request a fine point because it writes very well,

just well enough to leave words on paper,

in the simplest way possible.

A fine point leaves the finest line of words.

Look at your right hand, if you are right handed.

Is there a large, unsightly hump on the third finger

that came from the pressure of writing with pencils and regular pens?

I was determined not to be doomed to death

with an expanding and ugly protrusion on the third finger of my right hand,

due to the pressure caused by the inferior writing instruments I had been using.

I tried writing with fountain pens

and the words I wrote glazed over the page

needing no undue pressure.

Gradually, the hump disappeared.