Notes from a Fountain Pen Honeymoon

After a few hours of back and forth between a shiny new Pilot Metropolitan and my beloved Pentel Kerry 0.7mm mechanical pencil on the first day, I’m now – thanks to its incredible fluidity and balance, though only when the cap is posted to it – both fully in the fountain pen corner and (fairly) certain that this isn’t merely the first stages of new doe-eyed love but the flowering of a fully committed relationship.

I’d like to say that I’ve no idea why I’ve never tried one before but I know exactly why: as an inveterate southpaw, I live(d) in mortal fear – thanks to more than one bad experience in K-12 art classes and the dictatorship of enforced caligraphy – of the toll taken on paper by the coupling of slow-drying ink and the side of my hand. Fortunately, the pairing of a Metropolitan with Namiki ink cartridges (haven’t tried the converter / bottled ink yet as I’m – for now at least, though the green conscience in me winces a bit at discarded plastic tubes – sold on the cartridge) is a quick-drying one and thus far, I’ve had no incidents involving wayward ink globules, leaking, or rorschaching ink butterflies across an unsuspecting ivory page.

As for my handwriting, well, it’s still shit, but at least I want to improve (SLOW DOWN) and the pen only magnifies that desire.