My friend Susie loves Blackwing pencils, so very much. And let me tell you, they aren’t your ordinary pencil. They are very lovable. They are “signature pencils made in Japan from sustainably-sourced genuine California Incense-cedar and premium graphite.”
Some of you might remember that I’m doing a doctoral program in the Sacred Art of Writing. Part of that program is going on a literary tour of Ireland and Britain. Part of that tour is Bath. Part of Bath is the bookstore Mr B’s Emporium.
And part of Mr B’s Emporium is a generous display of Blackwing pencils hanging on the wall just kitty corner from the cash register.
And that’s where I saw Susie leaning in, reaching up, asking questions and listening intently to one of the shopkeepers — surely we won’t call him ‘a guy who works in a bookstore,’ when the bookstore is in Bath — explaining, joyfully and expansively, the provenance of Blackwing pencils.
John Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath with a Blackwing (a whole box, of course). Richard Dreyfuss clenches one in his teeth on the boat in Jaws before everything goes south. Quincy Jones and Truman Capote loved them, along with a long list of Who’s Who of pencil pushers. If you’re interested, you can watch a video about the pencil right here.
That day in Mr B’s Emporium there were murmurings about Ernest Hemingway also writing an entire novel, also using one box of Blackwings.
Susie bought a few pencils as gifts that day, as I watched from the exit. In this magical bookshop, Susie had bloomed into full Blackwing enthusiast. I just couldn’t bring myself to pay that much for a pencil — close to $6 each.
Until I could, of course.
Susie and I returned to Bath after the official part of the tour was over, travelling on our own with our friend Jeannette. Top on the list was ensuring Jeannette experienced Mr B’s Emporium, and I got to buy Blackwings for my children as souvenirs.
After I returned home from about three weeks of travel, I realized that a pencil, even teamed up with a tea towel with a photo of a young and glamorous queen, a titanic rubber ducky, a King Charles rubber ducky, a Roman Soldier rubber ducky, along with a few other oddities, needed a little explaining.
“It’s a very special pencil,” I explained. “It’s a very expensive pencil. Don’t lose it.”
The one I mailed to my son in Newfoundland barely survived and arrived in a torn open envelope with a missing eraser.
“Unbelievable!” I said, a little worked up. Also, this is the kid who carries the crossword puzzle from The New Yorker around on a clipboard everywhere he goes while on a beach holiday. Obviously, he wanted a Blackwing complete with eraser (a famed, soft, square-ish, special eraser).
There are no big lessons here, other than everything feels special in Bath and to be careful about how you mail things.
Texting with Susie after we had all settled back home, she wrote: “I can’t believe I bought $6 pencils.” But then we convinced ourselves, once again, that it was worth it and magical and right. We talked ourselves right back into it.
Blackwings are special.
The mail takes no prisoners.
And somewhere in this house there is an unused pencil floating around that I gave my other son that I will absolutely take back and claim as my own if I come upon it, rolled under some chair, covered in dog hair, which it undoubtedly is right now.
I will find it. I will dust it. I will steal it. I will print good things with it.
What else did I learn on the trip? So many things.
Seamus Heaney wrote poetry about a river that reminded me of the water that shaped the soul of my father. Just before he died in hospital, Seamus texted his wife in Latin: Noli timere. That means “Don’t be afraid.”
Thank you Seamus, on behalf of the widows.
C.S. Lewis and his brother often left church early to do things like go have a beer. The Kilns is an ordinary looking kind of house where extraordinary things happened. We saw the pulpit from which Lewis preached his sermon that is now the small book The Weight of Glory. Later, lying on a mattress on a floor in Bristol, I finally read it and wished I had much earlier.
We stood at the graves of Lewis and Tolkien. At Tolkien’s one of our number sang a soft tribute song in Elvish and by that time in the trip, it didn’t feel weird at all.
Jane Austen is still a rockstar in Bath, even though she didn’t much like the place.
Guinness really does taste better in Dublin. I love Dublin.
Also, every writer is shaped by place, and people.
And we are all in a place, with people. Writers or not, we are all shaped and formed and loved and put up with by place and people. Among other things, I was reminded to pay good attention.
There’s so much to pay attention to.
Isn’t the world so beautiful with the sheep on its hills and rivers cutting through villages with children fishing who could grow up to be artists who perfectly describe water, and help the rest of us really see our rivers?
And isn’t the world so extravagant with its sweatered older women pouring tea into porcelain cups for travellers after service in tiny chilly churches, and the world with all the dancing and fiddles one minute and violins the next, and singing out loud without feeling the least bit embarrassed, and all the poets and their poems and the pencils.