The Vessel

While I was in Arizona, I ended up at a mall that blew Phipps Plaza in Atlanta out of the damn water. Among other stores I have no business gracing the threshold of, there was a Montblanc store. I popped in to drool over my most coveted item, the Ingrid Bergman La Donna.  Lo, it was beautiful. I’ve not stopped running my mouth about it since, and people seem to find it strange that I covet a pen over other luxuries.

My love affair with pens began as soon as I learned to write. One of life’s simplest pleasures is the feeling of a pen moving across paper. When my addiction started, I went for the cheap stuff. At four shoe boxes full, I was a hoarder. Should a set of eight be broken by the demise or theft of one pen, the entire set had to be replaced. I might still be guilty of this, though I’ve trimmed down considerably from four shoe boxes.

I was introduced to Montblanc pens when I entered the business world. I fell in love immediately. The weight of the pen in my hand felt divine, and there was no better rush than gliding a pen of such painstaking craftsmanship over a piece of blank paper.

Everyone whose station in office life I envied had one. The star in the cap became more than your average status symbol. I wanted one of those stars. I wanted to be a star.  Signing my name with one of those precious pens, producing it from my purse nonchalantly- it would mean that I had arrived. I wanted all of that so badly I could taste it.

As the years worn on and I came to understand the demands of life as a ladder climber, my desire for status waned. My lust for Montblanc pens did not. I started writing again; at first in notebooks and word documents that no one would ever see, and eventually on the internet where everyone can see.

Most of my posts still start on paper. I always carry a pretty notebook so that when inspiration hits, I can capture it wherever I am. The pens I use to write in those notebooks have a few simple requirements- they must be pretty to look at and heavy in my hand.

A flimsy pen is not an appropriate tool for heavy words, as mine here so often are. I’ve gone exclusively to ballpoint for pens of this purpose; my handwriting when I’m excited or emotional is harder to read later when I’m typing if I write with a rollerball, and the feeling of the pen across the paper is deliberately slower and heavier in pressure.

Enter the Ingrid Bergman collection. A tribute to the leading lady of Casablanca, a woman known for her natural beauty and passionate intensity, a woman I admire for her style and grace.

photo credit: ingridbergman.com

“A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous.”

“I’ve never sought success in order to get fame and money; it’s the talent and the passion that count in success.”

The La Donna is a feminine pen, unlike the somewhat masculine Meisterstucks carried by fat middle-aged corporate men. A pen seemingly designed to be the vessel for my story, for my signature, for capturing my essence on paper. This pen is not a symbol of my status in the corporate world, of my salary and title. This particular pen would be a symbol of who I am as a person, a woman, a writer.

It would serve as a constant reminder of who I am, why I write and who I strive to be. Other people may not realize the significance of it, but if I ever hold that pen in my hand and feel the pleasure of gliding it over the blank page in a journal or signing my name with it? Every stroke will feel like a sonnet to what I hope is my best self.

“She has a combination of rare beauty, freshness, vitality and ability that is as uncommon as a century plant in bloom.”
–film critic Wanda Hale about Ingrid Bergman

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