Everybody on Earth I used to have a pen. In any house you opened a drawer and five appeared. They treasure a certain perfection, like the spoon or the seat. Over time, we have reduced its use. I used to go out on the street and, until a year ago, never wore one. Everyone has a small list of things that they try not to forget when they leave home, since we are all prone to leaving something important behind when we leave. Often it’s the keys or the wallet. One day I unhooked the pen from the list. Anything that occurred to me seemed like I could write it down in the notes on the phone.
But one morning, on my way to PostI noticed that I hadn’t written the address on the envelope. Luckily, as I passed through the Alameda, I noticed three kids and asked them to borrow a pen. They looked at me very strangely, as if I had just offered them drugs or sex. That, perhaps, would have seemed more logical to them. They replied that they did not have any, although all three had backpacks. “You seriously don’t have a pen?” They shook their heads. Perhaps they saw in me someone about to mug them, and chose to shake me off. I walked away, beaten.
Passing by a shop window I spied my reflection, to see what I was wearing, and if my favorite shirt, full of holes and ex-blue, was really repulsive, as my partner always says. Later, I bought a Bic to address the envelope and send it. Its use almost became one of those tricks that serve to solve stuck problems. Where there is no way out, and there is only room for surrender, the problem is solved with a subterfuge. Life would be too arduous without resorting to them sporadically. They are a solution for a specific minute, like when you fold a piece of cardboard and put it under the table leg. “He no longer limps,” you announce. The use of the pen displayed great power over the envelope. As he began to write, I could almost hear him say, “I do what I say here.”
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In 1999, in an interview in ‘The Paris Review’, the American historian was asked Shelby Foote if it was true that in his day, in the middle of writing his monumental ‘The Civil War’, “he had bought all the pens that were left in the United States” with which he used to work, from the Esterbrook brand. The manufacturer had gone bankrupt, and Foote was dangerously out of stock. One day, he went into a stationery store across from the Algonquin Hotel in New York, and seeing that they had Esterbrook Probate 313, he bought all the nibs from them.
Since my failure in the Alameda I always leave the house with a pen. Four weeks later, in fact, his superiority over machines was asserted again when my printer broke down. well it is true that printer stories always end badly. In the end she dies or she leaves you. She is unfriendly, cold, insidious. When you look for the fault, it doesn’t have it. She fails because she’s perfect and it should work, because she’s a motherfucker. She does not submit to eternal love, as pens do.