Pilots
This post is part of The Quiet Lane series.
It's a simple enough object, a pen.
In our childhood home there was always one specific model within reach: a Pilot Fineliner, black. I remember my dad bringing boxes of these from his office, and I don't think we ever ran out. Or maybe we did, all the time, and he just replaced them—we're pretty oblivious to day to day routines when we're kids. Parents are like house-elves: the dishwasher is empty? Already? Ooohhh, magic!
Ahem. I digress.
Eventually, the Fineliners' thick, dark ink and easy glide would become the perfect companion to the black notebooks I'd carry around everywhere, symbols of my teenage angst, always at the ready, smudging and bleeding through page after page of morose prose and obscure doodles. Those notebooks stayed with me all the way into my late twenties—and the dawn of the computer age.
That's when a Mac replaced...everything.
...
When I reintroduced my fingers to paper a couple of years ago, I bought three Fineliners: black, red, and blue. But the lines felt a lot thicker than I remembered (or my tastes had changed) so I strayed, experimented with other pens, without settling on anything. Then, last summer, I decided to do some proper research on the subject, and I ended up with a set of Sakura Micron pens: archival, waterproof, fade resistant ink; precise tips; they seemed like a perfect choice. Most of the reviews were glowing too, so I was excited. I wanted to like them.
Darn.
The precision was there, and the ink dried instantly. But writing with the 02 mm nib was like pushing chalk on a blackboard—too much resistance for my taste, on any paper I tried. The 08 and 005 fared a bit better, but still, I wasn't feeling it. I also noticed the ink becoming much lighter, just a few days in, as if the pen was about to run out. It never did but the black definitely lost its initial clarity, very early on.
I stuck with them for awhile.
Then I went back to the drawing board.
...
It's funny how everything is a rabbit hole these days: keyboards, notebooks, PKM strategies and apps, productivity tools... You launch a search and drown if you don't watch your steps. So it is with pens as well, naturally. But amidst the obscure imports and the expensive fountain stuff, I came across the Pilot brand again and again—usually the G2 or the V5 Precise. Basic, utilitarian...but why not? Why not go back to the heady days of my youth and flowing streams of thought and jet black ink?
I ordered a pack of five V5 Precise. There's no fancy packaging, no cute design, just cardboard and molded plastic, the stuff of every office store rack in the world. They don't dry as quickly, so I still get smudges if I'm not careful.
But I'm home.
