True Metalist Ballpoint Pen from Levenger

Words are organic things, grown in the mind at the right time for the right purpose.  Alas, sometimes transmission breaks down.  The mouth doesn’t want to cooperate with the brain or the writing instrument fails to operate.  That perfectly grown word is lost.

Can’t do much about the mouth, unfortunately, but the writing instrument … perhaps in that area aid can be rendered.  I recently received a ball point pen from Levenger.  It’s their True Writer Metalist Ballpoint.  I wanted the fountain pen, but, whatever, I like pens.

This one’s well balanced; it falls nicely into the crook of your hand and doesn’t draw attention to itself due to weight.  More importantly, it writes very nicely.  I appreciated that it starts inscribing right away.  No scribbling on the back of a file folder to get it started, no waiting for it to warm up.

Old Fashioned Pens

I’ve always loved pens.  For a while I got the Fountain Pen Hospital catalog and spent time drooling over the awesome pens it contained.  Of course, these mighty implements were well beyond my little budget.  Even so, the idea of starting a pen collection rattled around in my head.  I just couldn’t justify indulging myself.

Fortunately, I have children.

Both of them saw pictures of fountain pens and decided it would be cool to have some.  Well, not fountain pens actually.  They liked the even older dip pens, replete with inkwell.  So I thought, this is a better hobby than movies or video games, right?  Right.  Therefore, one weekend afternoon we found this website, Pendemonium.  They sell vintage dip pens, nibs, inks, inkwells, the whole deal.

We found a few we liked and the prices were good.  For $31 we bought 3 dip pens and a bottle of ink.  So, Dad managed to get an old pen he likes and the kids are writing stories and poems and such by dipping a pen in a bottle of ink.  Cool.

I love the way the pens feel.  The scrape of the nib on the paper, the sharp lines of the letters; using it is like the ne plus ultra of writing.  I’ve even got a hard back, spiral bound journal.  Talk about pukka scribing – I’m in it now!