For the Love of Pens, Performed in the vain of William Shakespeare, King of Literature.
I woke today thinking about how deeply, madly in love I am with my pen. What is it? Why do I admire it so? Is it because it's phallic or is this obsession deeper than the mere fondling of a shaft that does my bidding?
The use of the pen began in Mesopotamia nearly five thousand years ago. In its more rudimentary form, the pen began as a stylus made of metal, bone, or ivory that was pressed into or scraped across wet clay that would later dry and form a tablet.
Later, though I'm not sure how much later, humans began using cut reeds that would hold ink and which were split at the end. Split... hmmm. That doesn't sound too comfortable, but it was the reed pen that marked a revolutionary moment for the scribe. With this improvement, one could slide their thoughts across a page, mirroring the gracefulness of the human mind as opposed to digging consciousness into a lump.
In the sixth century, quill pens were made from feathers, dipped in ink. They offered better flow and control than any scribbling tool before them. And who doesn't like a little control over their flow? Ahem.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth century, metal nibs replaced the quill. Nibs, which I think also sounds quite phallic, were more durable and longer lasting. No one doesn't love stamina and endurance. Oh, had I been alive to have a nib of my very own!
Of course, progress can never be stopped and the future invention of disposable ball point pens, felt tip pens, and blah blah blah came to exist. These things I know little about, having expired before their invention, and with no ability to see into the future beyond a few hundred years. My point however, fellow lovers of the written word, is that humankind never stopped pursuing better tools with which to express their inner worlds.
The pen is a testament of determination, will, and betterment. Its evolution has enabled us to swiftly and endlessly transcribe our sentience, self awareness, and our psyche. And in that sense, I, the King of Literature, a man who is ever shifting and improving himself, must always possess a pen--that phallic representation of the superiority of human speculation and ponderment.
-Joey Handcock