My Hyperspecifity of Things
It is funny the amount of discussion in my own head, with me, about this above item. You see, this is a refill for a Parker Jotter. It is also a refill for the Pat Peckham pens. The Jotter is the thing clipped to my Field Notes pocket notebook that is with me everywhere.
And now the wheels come off….
So right now the pen has a stock sort of ball point ink in it. This type of pen makes ridges on the paper when you write on it. Which, there are times in my life I love, and other times in my life I find to be an abomination. I am in a middle point right now, and as such I am unsure about the above refill that I own
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Now, the above refill is quite a bit smoother and lighter in touch than the stock insert, and as such makes no ridges. And right now since I am cool with ridges, and cool without ridges, I cannot decide if I want to change refills to the above, or go to a standard refill.
To expand out, in the daily journal I have kept for decades, there are years of writing in which I have rejected the ridges. For whatever reason, I stayed in the gel family, and wrote only with that. Full notebooks iwthout ridges.
I am absolutely the only one who would notice this. Except Amanda, after I die, she might find it interesting. But, you watch some movie, and there is a notebook, and I am the kind of guy who wants to see if there are ridges or not. I like what Austin wrote.
What is interesting for me, is this sort of dwelling on this stuff is not a distraction from writing. The writing does not appear affected, but I like the story in my head. When I was in college it was the story of the Kerouac scroll, or reading Ginsbergs journals, and later it was things like the movie booksellers.
I do not think of this stuff as ephemera. I think of it is as very specific parts of process, journey, all of it. The idea that I spent a lot of time researching HOW David McCoullough wrote those books is fascinating. How Capote wrote. The Faulkner drunk on the couch and secretary picture. Jim Thompson and his method.
The how is interesting to me. It has always been interesting.