It may be just late January, it may be the pandemic that drags on and keeps us confined and separate from each other and from so many happy plans and occupations we’d ordinarily pursue, it may just be a chapter of my own story, but lately I’ve been feeling a bit blue.
It’s not dreadful. It’s not pleasant, though.
I seem to be less capable than usual of diligent mental hygiene (and if that sounds like work, I think we can agree that it is – but valuable, necessary work that adults do to keep themselves clear and sane and relatively kind). Thoughts I’d rather not think suggest themselves to my mind and without my conscious permission take root and color other thoughts and before I know it things look pretty bleak.
This is not every day, mind you, but often enough to notice and to know that something must be done.
We might imagine that “something” as heroic, impressive, a whole course of action, study, travel, self-reflection, but in my experience, it’s actually quite modest: one small little thing to turn the tide.
Filling my fountain pens is one such small something. It’s completely absorbing, quite often messy in a way I find fun, sometimes mixed with an element of light danger when Mish, my cat, hops up on the desk to oversee the business. I can’t brood and fill pens. I can’t think about much other than the pens.
And while I’m engaged in drawing ink up into the converters, wiping the nibs, reassembling the pens, and testing them, I notice many things to like: colors, the shapes of bottles, fine engraving on the nibs, the sheen of gold or silver in some inks and how it sparkles in the sun coming in the window.
Recently, I filled my pens and found one that wouldn’t work. There’s a moment when it feels like the flow will always be checked and the pen may be beyond repair. But that is rarely true. I took a breath and did what I know to address the block. Once I got the pen working, I wrote this tiny poem:
Fountain pen lesson
Is this going to work?
Of course it is.
Do what you need to do
to get the flow started.
A little rinse,
a shake, and look,
here comes the ink.
Here come the words.
I like the way the poem reminds me to do the small modest simple things I need to do “to get the flow started,” whether that be the ink flow or the larger flow – by which I mean The Honey Flow. In truth, that flow is always flowing, it’s just me that needs to flow with it.
Once I get myself flowing again, I write my life with a more graceful hand, and the words I choose are ones of beauty, faith, gratitude, and JOY.
