Just a Pencil

You might appreciate this : for the love of pencils.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Your posts have caused me to think of pencils and how they're anchored deep in our childhoods.

There are sensory memories of the colours, touch and smell of them back in nursery days; even the sound of a pencil being drummed on a surface is ready to be recalled. Vermilion. It was a word written in gold at the top of one of the classroom pencils and locked in memory, like a bug in amber, for no other reason than the colours, touch and word fired a blaze of synapses.

I can remember a preference for the hexagonal ones over the round ones and how the shaving turned itself outwards, then inwards, from the sharp blade of silver metal sharpeners. Fragments of pigment would lightly dust the clean blade and frustration was always deferred until the fresh point broke off and got lodged in the barrel. It's easy to engage with the sense-memory of the fragile wood shaving lying on fingertips and being slowly, crunchingly rubbed to fragments.

A knife in a boy's hand is also a tiny mile-stone. Can you recall the times when the sharpener was usurped by the more visceral penknife or box-cutter blade? My dad was an expert who could create a good point with two flicks of the wrist. For a boy, it was a clumsy and wasteful process with long, uneven shavings and pitted pencil points. It took practice. Later on it became a skill and nuanced too. A strong point for marking wood and plaster; a finer point for drawing.

Aye, the humble pencil is a wonderful tool.

a reply to: GENERAL EYES

That cracked me up!! I had to watch it like twice to even try to understand if he was serious. Frankly, I'm still not sure!

I loved the line about

....It makes me think about how we're all gonna' die, starving to death and tearing each other apart, in some kind of wasteland...

Talk about "dead pan"...WOW!!!



P.S. I did actually check out his wiki page and his website. I'm still not sure it's even real, but it looks legit. Not surprising though that some people will actually pay someone $500 bucks to sharpen a pencil! I guess the immortal words of P.T. Barnum were more accurate than we will ever know.

a reply to: Kandinsky

There is an interesting dichotomy between a simple wooden pencil and our modern high-tech society. A pencil is so low-tech. Rees hit on it a little in the video posted above when discussing starting his business (although I'm not entirely convinced he's serious).

I do find a certain amount of irony in the fact that despite our bleeding-edge technologically lead society, sometimes it is the simplest things which address the most difficult challenges the best. Perhaps it is analogous to Occam's Razor in many ways. Perhaps it is even why I'm drawn to wooden pencils even. They harken back to simpler, happier, times.

I find even more irony in the notion that my day-job is in aviation technology, and I oversee work on some of the most complex systems imaginable, yet I love wooden pencils and use them always. Every evening I return back to the ranch to one of the lowest tech professions imaginable, raising cattle. It's striking that a simple wooden pencil is wholly at home and applicable in both worlds.

My wife just groans when she sees yet another box show up on the porch or in the mail. "How many more pencils did you get this time? When will you have enough?" she'll often ask. In truth, I probably have more pencils than I will ever use personally, but it matters not. I collect quality wooden pencils, and likely have thousands. Maybe it's the smell, maybe it's the fine lacquer finish...or maybe it really is that connection between the legacy of a wise old tree and the legacy left behind by the pencil it gives way to. Maybe it's the history left behind. In all actuality, it's probably all those things and more.

All in a simple wooden pencil.