writing – Carlo Centeno

The Power of the Pen, the Permanence of Paper

“The sending of a letter constitutes a magic grasp upon the future.”
Iris Murdock, CBE, DBE. Irish-born, British philosopher & novelist

“In our letters, we are recollecting and conversing with the soul, through both our friends and ourselves.”
Thomas Moore Irish writer, social philosopher and in his lifetime, regarded as “Ireland’s national bard.”

“There is something special about holding a hand written letter. It carries the essence of the writer.” Jane Austen

I would suspect that the majority of readers who come across my blog do not write with a fountain pen. Not unusual and it’s okay. That’s just a factoid of our technology epoch. It’s been written that many are far more familiar with a screen, a QWERTY keyboard and now the exponential growth of AI. An observation, as well as a dirge, for the sentience and engagement of a communication method that some find impractical and inefficient.

Yet on any given day or evening, I’m not far from paper and a pen filled with royal blue ink, ink drawn from a bottle and into a pen barrel via its nib and the piston residing in that barrel. Archaic, perhaps, yet some believe such things are unnecessary for our current state of living. What about the state of your life and the qualities that define its value…?

A frequent criticism is that using such a writing instrument is too slow, to use and get used to. Put another way, this is a communication method that requires your patience, your willingness to engage both mind and heart over a period of time. Handwriting is the articulation of thinking, learning, feeling and so much more.

I would be remiss if I did not include some of the toils in finding the right paper and ink that adds to the fascination of such a timeless way of expression. These 2 items are just part of the discovery process, one which needs your attention as you gain familiarity and traction to fountain pens, inks, types of paper and of course, writing. With a nod to digital technology, researching pens, paper and ink is far easier now than it has ever been.

Writing with ink and paper is slow, certainly slower compared to the speed in which we talk; and even that is a lot slower than our brains when we’re processing just about anything we can think of. Writing slowly does not correlate to slow thinking. Such writing encompasses thoughtful pauses, an examination of those and adjacent thoughts, whether abstract or tangible, even working to make what was just put to paper more lucid for anyone–including myself–to grasp.

If you’ve come this far, you might have wondered about the “Permanence in Paper” notion in the essay’s title. Paper and the writing it holds can survive over a long period of time. But I wonder about some of those pages bound or bundled together for centuries. Egyptian manuscripts written on Papyrus are some of the oldest known individual texts in existence. Their scrolls go back c. 2500 BCE, whereas paper in its earliest form appeared in China c. 105 CE. [Note: BCE stands for Before Common Era and CE represents Common Era. These are the secular versions of Before Christ (BC) and After Christ/Anno Domini].

I think of times in history when handwritten correspondence was the perhaps the most confident way to connect. I visualize piles of envelopes each with a letter, a notice or alert, even a photograph among other possibilities. There were many, many things in those letters, rote and topical. There was the weight of loss and longing, of anticipation and impatience, of a happiness that seems forever in arriving, or the gravity of profound grief relentless in its hold of sadness, regret and helplessness.

Books have been written describing letters that have been exchanged. John and Abigail Smith Adams regularly wrote to each other. They were well ahead of their time as they were reciprocal to each other for support and encouragement and more. Think of this: more than once, Mr. Adams stated in his letters that Ms. Adams was his “dearest partner” and a “stateswoman” worthy to be among the most astute of advisors and confidantes.

Queen Elizabeth 1 wrote upwards of “3,000 plus letters to her oldest daughter.” President Lincoln’s “letter to Widow Bixby” is as empathetic and demonstrative of any condolence letter addressing a mother’s loss. The King of Sweden, Gustav Vasa [1523-1560] wrote at least 1,000 letters according to records; the quantity filled 29 books.

Then there are the epistolary writers who crafted letter writing from letters available to the public. Their constructs of referring to letters within a story or a novel carried some significance to the protagonists, society, an ideal, a scandal and so on. Authors Mary Shelley [Frankenstein] and Bram Stoker [Dracula] were epistolary writers. They used letters as a vehicle to convey everything from discovery to fear, to hope and love. And to think that their stories with these references of hand written letters have to this day, remain relevant and thought provoking.

For those who already do as I do with pen and paper, well they know a few positives associated with this old-school way of communicating: for starters, no special apps or electronics are required.

Return to terra firma. A few pointers

Practically speaking, if this is your first foray, or re-entry to FP writing after a long sabbatical, you do not need a costly [above $25. USD] pen. You can obtain a fountain pen at a lower cost, but you get what you pay for. To start, select a universally adequate Medium nib. Nibs are made with steel or gold. Steel is more durable and gold has a feel all its own. The pen should come with a converter with the option of using universal ink cartridges. Color ink? That’s up to you.
Speaking of ink, the easiest brand [at least around here] anyway is a ubiquitous bottle of Parker “Quink” in black, blue-black or royal blue. I believe all but the black is water & spot-cleaner soluble in combination. Parker offers cartridges as well, useful when traveling and potentially not as messy as carrying bottled ink. The Parker cartridges are made for use in Parker pens, however, you can also use universal ink cartridges, which are shorter in length and just as functional as any other.
Paper. For initial practice, copy paper works, but it’s not ideal. You may experience blotching [when the paper sucks ink out of the pen creating spots]. And/or feathering, which is when the lines that make up your letters show tiny “feathers” coming from the main line that defines your letters. Ultimately, this will take some trial and error. Paperworks has a special sale of letter sized paper that may do the trick. Look for samplers that offer sheets of different weight papers. I cut these sheets in half and have a faux-Monarch size sheet I use for letters.
Etsy has a number of papers as well. Names such as Clairefontaine and Tomeo [fantastic quality from Japan] are just 2 of other manufacturers that offer incredible papers. I do recommend you stay with smooth finished sheets versus sheets that have texture. Trust me on that one suggestion. A smooth surface is more forgiving than one that has texture. Goulet Pens has a complete section/tab on everything that has to do with fountain pens, inks, nibs, paper et al.
You can also create your own personalized cards, letters and envelopes using an embossing stamp. I use one for my return address on the flap of the envelope and the second I use to emboss my name at the “header” area at the top of my letter.

Here’s another resource that you may find useful in your journey:

https://epica.com/blogs/articles-by-epica/putting-pen-to-paper

Final thoughts

Establish a schedule to write. Get yourself a journal and consider writing anything that comes to mind. A letter to your adolescent self or your current and future selves; notes about the _[skill]_in you that you want to improve. Essentially marry your thoughts to the fine motor skills that are important to clear writing. Legible writing is one thing, while illegible writing is but stepping stone that can lead you to letters, words, sentences and more with a character that’s yours and yours alone. Like learning an instrument, to be good at it, you need to have a plan, and you need to set aside time to make it work.

When you’re all in, the writing activity goes beyond movements of your wrist. Remember it’s your writing arm that carries the energy required to move synchronously across the paper & table top. Using your entire arm is necessary because it encourages good coordination and a focus. Another benefit is the wrist won’t do all the work, which means less repetitive stress to all those small tendons and cartilage, etc.

Left handers can fountain pen their way on & across paper. Take a look at scriveiner.com which contains a good amount of helpful details on what to look for.

Finally, I leave you with perhaps the wisest sentence in this top-heavy tome of questionable relevance:

“If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them”. George Orwell

WinterLight-2

I’ll admit that it can take a lot out of you when winter conditions pin indicators below the norm [temperature, wind chill], or above the line [accumulation and severity of snow/freezing rain/sleet]. By February, a good number of folks are pining for—some hoping through a telekinetic event—the arrival of spring.
Yet in spite of our incongruous sentiments about winter, its been said that residents of Scandinavian countries can make the best of it.
Perhaps their overall acceptance of this perennial cold, snow and short days has something to do with the their countries having “the happiest people in the world.” Is there an attitude, a perception that we’re altogether missing? Warmer clothing compared to ours?

We’ve [me and my wife, MJ] made treks to the Berkshires all year long with additional stops during winter. Some of these stops included special outdoor exhibits of which 2 come to mind: The Mount, Edith Wharton’s home, and also at Naumkeag Estate. The photos posted here are from Nightwood, and it was a wonderful stroll along the garden pathways and woods at The Mount.

Appropriate winter clothing makes a big difference; it does get colder in the Berkshires. Key details: wool sweaters, base layers, even hand warmers.
Along a mile-long path cutting through the woods and gardens, the exhibits appear like waypoints on a map. Each installation carries its own interpretation of light, while an original music composition aurally ties everything together.

My interpretation of The Mount exhibit centered around the intensity of each installation, vis-a-vis the light itself. Using B&W images had provided [for me] a key, old-school tenet of imagery: simplicity allows interaction between the visitor, and the subject at hand. Put another way, monochromatic images transcend continuity. Color images offer validation to what we see because we readily see color. Yet color can be distracting. Not a slight, but just a matter of fact.

For me, I’m drawn to B&W images because of its tonal consistency. Black & white does not have the influence of color, and yet allows me to see the entire image and all its nuances.

I, along with others like color images , but there are times when color feels more like a distraction. A single color that’s part of a smaller detail is enough to pull you away from the whole and down into a rabbit’s hole. Still, B&W does have a way of binding together the elements that make up the photograph, all within the inimitable, ever valid black & white palette.

Winter Light

[Dylan Thomas, poet; Do not go gentle into that good night.]

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Consciousness in the Age of Irreverence

I’m not alone on this one, but it seems that many channels of communication [discussions, social media and various online postings, news media, e.g.] are quite inhospitable. Of course not all content is an incorrigible exaggeration, but it does seem that we’ve gone myopic of a rule that involves interaction and in particular, discussion, between different POVs. Essentially, such discussions are cleaved in 2. There are some instances where discussions cannot abide with the adage, One can disagree without being disagreeable.

Ironically, much of what we do that makes us feel lost, infuriated and misunderstood is, indeed, something that’s very human. And of course, we can be intractable and obstinate just as we can be manageable and flexible. It’s been said that politics and elections are catalysts to conditions of inflexibility, among other reactions and situations.

Consciousness Fine Tuned

Being aware of yourself and how you think about everything around you is uniquely yours. There are a few theories which attempt to explain consciousness, but one written by a researcher at Boston University School of Medicine is one which mortals like me can comprehend.
The end of October has rendered our landscape into a wonderful palette of autumnal colors: the reds, orange, yellows and hues in between are as beautiful as I’ve ever seen. I share this because watching and/or listening to the news is taking the wind out of my sails. So, to fine tune [or tune out] the bad vibes plaguing airwaves, print, and online, I retreat to places where I can hear my thoughts and submit to various feelings coursing through my consciousness.

You could say that I’m “rebooting” my consciousness, but I feel it’s more like a “recalibrating” effort to keep my sanity more or less where it’s supposed to be. The quiet and calm of places such as these act like a rheostat where mood, color, the smell of the air and so on can be dialed up or down or not at all. In doing so, I’m reminded that the angst raging between factions entrenched in ideologies are obstacles for realizing a common good. The greater good lies dormant, restrained with indifference and the stubborn personas that make life uncomfortable.

There’s no denying the subjectivity of consciousness, but there are constructs within it which allow for common ground. Without those common constructs co-existence would be, in a word, Sisyphian.

I look to writing and chasing the light, feeling immersed with either one or both, to purge distress, sadness, loss of concentration, etc. Certainly, when your mind is busy with something good, a good that pulls you away from angst, then jump in.
I won’t be chagrined by situations beyond my reach. It’s a waste of energy and time grinding about things I cannot control. That’s easier said than done, but I remind myself to ruminate less on what weighs me down and instead examine alternatives that have helped me before.

Can anyone deflect dissonance long enough to find even the smallest gesture or comment that closes distance and transforms distraction into possibility?

I relish the 4-seasons here in New England. I have preferences for the times in a year that are cooler and less humid, but I also welcome activities and distractions that come with the other seasons: longer daylight hours, trips to Cape Cod in Massachusetts [salt water and salty air are genuinely therapeutic], visits to the Berkshires and so forth.

How do you take care of your sense of–or even recalibrate–consciousness?

Edvard Munch

At the Clark Institute of Art, running through October 15, 2023, is a special exhibition, Edvard Munch: Trembling Earth. Munch’s [“Edward Moonk” Norwegian pronunciation] most recognizable, iconic painting is The Scream, and yet not many know of his other work which includes a number of self-portraits, prints, figure portraits and landscapes. The latter showed what he felt was a confluence of the natural world and humankind where nature provided a kind of salve that the urban environment could not deliver. The artist’s life contained the antagonists that shaped many of his creations: life and death; love and loss; loneliness and despair. And yet Munch as a protagonist, allowed us to see and feel the very antagonists that took hold of his deepest emotions.

I found the entire exhibit revealing if not eerily prescient. The power of art in all its forms allows us not to just see the obvious, but to measure if not ascertain a) what behooved the artist to produce his/her creation and b) what, if anything, draws your attention to the work?

While some of his paintings hint at Vincent van Gogh [1853-1890], there is a quality that makes Edvard Munch’s work stand apart: his apotheosis of anxiety, loneliness, longing and loss are indicated by the despair of his faceless human subjects. The hue of uncertainty and angst lay claim to troubled souls.

This is one of my favorite paintings, Woman with pumpkin. Its creation captures a sense of lost, and longing. The symbolism could be anything and everything. The pumpkin and the dark green color appear as if a person is holding the woman. Note the 3 “fingers” on the hip of the woman. In fact, the greenery next to the woman appears to be kneeling on its right knee, its “left leg” bent with a “foot” planted directly on the ground close to her back. Hence, the figure is resting its head on the woman’s right shoulder, the right arm suggesting a pillow.

Whatever you see and however you see it, Munch is a captivating study of conflict. You can feel it in most all of his works. The landscapes provide contrasts regarding our ability–and inability–to co-exist not only with the natural world, but with each other. Put another way, Munch is caught within an insatiable push-pull between the Id [our instincts], the Ego [reality] and the Superego [moral strength].

No artist lives a life of order and predictability. It’s contrarian to that world of creativity and expression. Munch’s self-portraits demonstrate a fortitude within his reality that dices with the likes of the Id and the Superego. Each of us deal with the instability created by our instincts and morality, our actions and reactions, our angst and distress. In a way Munch’s paintings brings form to what is often abstract yet palpable, even vicarious and visceral.

Fog aka creative block

This is the view from my office. Because this window faces north, changes in weather often come this way, and today was no exception. A front was slowly moving through bringing with it some drizzle if not showers and a pinch of wet snow for good measure.
I go through some days feeling creatively barren, as if covered with a fog. My brain cannot keep focus of what’s important, nor can it generate a spark of an idea. I’d welcome a nugget of thought that morphs into a theme, a sentence, a paragraph and even a photograph.

When that kind of fog moves in, I used to double down on my brain as if I could purposefully, indeed consciously command by merely thinking, “I need something to work with here! Get it off the ground.” A couple mugs of green tea or coffee later, nothing appears on my creative radar.
And so I apply a way of thinking and visualizing to help reveal something/anything beneath that fog. I imagine what’s lying beneath not only my creative fog, but the cloak draped outside my window. Somehow the symbiosis of such processing helps clear my brain fog. It doesn’t reveal something monumental; it’s not a Eureka! moment at all. Some real right-brain elbow juice comes into play. I’m from the school that believes there’s no such thing as a “dumb idea or answer.” Possibilities abound depending on your attitude.

The transition time varies, sometimes in an hour, other times a day or 2 later. I suppose other efforts have probably taken longer to render that creative crumb-of-an idea or concept. If I knew how to sketch, perhaps it would be easier and at times faster to arrive at the idea. However, it’s just the way this person works. Not very exciting. The excitement–if you can call it that–is more a feeling of relief and satisfaction.

Whether I’m looking at a blank sheet of paper, a clean page in my journal or through a camera viewfinder [yes, very old school this guy], I sometimes think of Occam’s razor, a philosophy that states when troubled with competing solutions or ideas for a desired outcome, often the simplest version is the very solution that makes sense.

“Switch-Tasking”

Time, energy and focus are 3 KPIs [Key Performance Indicators] for mulitasking. And likely there are other indicators, and for those, I’ll need an ombudsman to help reset my already overloaded brain. In any one of these factors, you either have it, lose it or want it. For the most part, I’d say most people want them all, or to at least hold onto whatever’s in you.

However, multitasking is not really multitasking.

Ms. Nancy Napier, Ph.D. and contributor to Psychology Today identifies it more as “switch-tasking.” For decades we’ve heard that new electronics and computers and software are supposed to help make our professional lives much easier and faster, that’s rarely the case. Many of my marketing projects are open—actually minimized—on my screen. Perhaps “minimizing” those open windows and apps is in actually diluting the strength of your project[s].
Dr. Napier points out switching between projects is counter productive. In fact, it takes a good amount of time and energy to realign your mental details jumping from one open project to another. All of this creates stress [but we already knew that].

As Dr. Napier puts it, multitasking is mentally and physically rough on anyone. The mode of working start-stop-start-stop-restart becomes a catalyst for mistakes, inefficiency and time lost. As the saying goes, “Well, there’s 30-minutes I can’t get back.”

Did you happen to notice the bee in the first photo [the sunflower]? No, well, were you multitasking….excuse me, “switch tasking?”

Color

Autumn is my favorite season for a variety of reasons: the cooler, drier air is both invigorating and refreshing, the quality of light is remarkable, at times appearing clearer on even overcast days. Even time feels slower with a more gentle cadence though by mid-November, I wonder how it went by so quickly. Certainly it goes without saying that the foliage change can be magical, even personally restorative.

Many years ago, I attended a photojournalism workshop at what was then called The Maine Photographic Workshops in Camden, now known as Maine Media Workshop located in Rockport, a mere stone’s throw from Camden. Located half-way up the coast of Maine, the town of Camden sits next to Penobscot Bay. I haven’t been back since, so I hope it hasn’t lost its New England charm. It was quaint, quiet and photogenic to be sure.
You can glean techniques and technical knowledge from more places today than back then [now a surfeit of info sits on the web]. Convenience is nice, but for me, being engaged with a like-minded person is all the more rewarding. Levels of inspiration come to me when I visit an exhibition, a gallery or listen to or converse with a speaker whose work clearly validates that person’s passion for his/her choices.

I was fortunate to have heard and seen in person Jay Maisel, Ernst Haas and Dick Durrance. Titans of their craft, I learned more than just technique, but a whole lot more about this passion to see things in a new way, to transcend the connections of light, color, subject, interpretation and meaning. My brain needed to do some real lifting and learning, and was thus able to do so when my soul became the catalyst to assist with that lifting and learning.

I like to think of seasonal transitions as a form of recalibration. It’s more than a reset, because to reset anything is effectively returning to its default state. Recalibration is a nuance in alignment. If I’m not sure of what I’m feeling when I look through a viewfinder, I move a few or more steps to one side or another, as well as toward or away from my subject. Recalibrating.

There are similarities in writing, but they’re a bigger challenge for me to describe. I suppose the very title of this post lends itself to recalibrating: adjust the “color” of your words such as tone, passive versus active voice, even a tweak in aliteration to keep your narrative—and your thinking—interesting.

Autumn just doesn’t land here in the northeast; when it does arrive it’s akin to that sense of belonging, of knowing that your journey—in spite of personal hills and valleys—continues with the expected and as well as the unexpected. I like all the seasons, but fall is the one which captures the zeitgeist of the rest of the calendar. It’s a short period of time, that in its most fundamental form, feels like the comfort food that’s been sorely missing for more than half the year.

Connections

I love Cape Cod. The season doesn’t matter, but late summer is often a great time. There’s less traffic and a more laid back atmosphere. The beaches and wharfs hold less people, though there are those hearty souls who continue their routines swimming parallel to the shore.
I watch the few on the beaches, most in their chairs, some sitting or lying across a large towel. Others are involved in conversation or quietly engrossed with a book in hand.
You can always count on walkers tracing their steps first one way, then on their return trip to a starting point. The most jubilant are often a dog and its owner. They’ve waited for the moment when the beach was available to them and their joy is clearly displayed. This is the kind of connection that’s about as simple and straightforward as it can get: get out and spend time with good friends, family, your dog—even yourself.

The men enjoying their cocktails aboard a boat speaks of many types of connections: family, work colleague, college room mate, best friend, and so forth. Between the “remember when….did you hear….whatever happened to…” are those moments of hilarity, some brought on by something long past, others in more recent times. Nostalgia connects with the present.

I love the Cape, especially for the many connections its made for me.

Fade-free nostalgia…

What is it about nostalgia that some of us cannot jettison? A valid concern is that the yearning makes a mess of being-in-the-moment. That same yearning can deny future possibilities when it turns to ruminating. For some, nostalgia can magnify preoccupation. Not good.

Yet there are fragments of nostalgia that remain fade-free. Like writing/journaling and photography, riding a sport bike can be solitary, well, a choice by many, including myself. Certainly some of my own experience aboard two wheels can be marked as memorable [and mostly positive].

As is fitting this time of year, nostalgia tends to swell, though more specifically with auld lang syne, those days of fond remembrance, of days spent from far-off times or even those more recent. It matters none because an experience that generates a fondness or even a light-hearted sense of joy is timeless. The decades can sometimes feel “like only yesterday.”

The distinction I’m trying to make is that auld lang syne speaks of a heart-felt time devoid of regret and rumination. Isn’t that what probes our memory at year’s end? What have we forgotten? Whom have we forgotten?

My school of thought is that these fade-free capsules of nostalgia are not containers of events that could’ve or should’ve been. No, auld lang syne is more about preserving good things which matter: lessons learned, people who’ve made a difference, the unconditional, enduring quality of gratitude and love.

Before I make a mess of this post, I’ll let the poet Robert Burns weigh in. He’s the Scot who made this poem, this inimitable song, about as timeless as anything found in life. Click here.