166. The Heart Pays Dearly for the Things It Desires

I am susceptible to the opinions of friends. I met Ken at Scaredy Cats, a local café that caters to a younger crowd with an enthusiasm for board games. There are shelves chock-full of games of strategy and chance and the young adults battle through contests while enjoying their drinks. For Ken and me, it is just drinks and conversation.

The Friday before, I had met with the Cardiff Nib Nobs, a group of fountain pen enthusiasts, some coming from as far away as Bath, to chat while showing and sharing the new pens we have acquired. Also new inks, new notebooks, and any other fountain pen related accessories. I was still vibrating with the passion for pens when I met Ken the next day. For no better reason than to annoy Ken, who doesn’t quite share my passion, I showed him the photograph of a fountain pen I have been craving.



Annoying one another is a joyous way of amusing ourselves. This was a pen I’ve been lusting after for months, the Graf von Faber-Castell Pen of the Year 2023, “Ancient Egypt”. I had an ulterior motive. The pen was a distracting obsession that sometimes prevented me from reading or writing or falling asleep. It was absurdly expensive, listing for £5,800, but I was coming up on the annual mandatory withdrawals from my retirement accounts, RMDs (Required Minimum Distributions). I was also approaching my seventy-fifth birthday. I thought I had defused my obsession for this Faber-Castell fountain pen, but temptation re-emerged. Confessing this weakness to Ken would bring about his biting ridicule. I was confident his teasing would defuse the desire.

It was a shock for me, the irony, that it would be Ken, of all people, who would reignite the flame. He thought the pen beautiful and told me I should buy it. Was he being sarcastic, I asked? But no, he insisted he was being sincere.

The price is not justified by the materials it contains. Sure, the nib is gold, but there isn’t a lot of it. It is far less complicated than a mechanical watch or a precision camera of the same price. The pen is being valued as a work of art. The number of fountain pens being made is artificially limited to 375 to justify inflating the price. Only a sucker would think the price is warranted. The heart pays dearly for the things it desires and accepting the pen as a work of art, well, what is an original etching by Rembrandt or Picasso; merely a limited number of ink-stained papers?

The pen’s black barrel wears a mechanical engraving of hieroglyphs. The pen is black. The twelve bands of hieroglyphs encircle the barrel like the columns of the Karnak Temple. Each band represents a different deity. One of them is Thoth, the god of writing. A lapis lazuli scarab is inlaid into the top of the cap. The Eye of Horus formed in gold sits on the barrel's end. Remove the cap and the colorful section is revealed, alternating blue and gold stripes, as found on the mask of Tutankhamun. And, of course, a bright gold nib.

It is because of the hieroglyphs that I am enamored with the pen. It is obvious so were its designers. Hieroglyphics are not the first form of writing. Writing began in Sumer over 5000 years ago. But very soon thereafter, writing appeared in Egypt. Whereas the writing of the Sumerians consisted of combinations of wedge-shaped marks, today’s alphabet has its origins in Egyptian hieroglyphics. I apply a great romance to that significance. I feel a deep association to the long history of writing as it has become my purpose, my trade. Does owning that pen enhance the attachment to the history of this artform? Will it continually lift my spirits, reminding me that there is continuity in the words on this paper with the words on some pharaoh’s tomb? Am I not a participant in the long and noble craft of scribe, adding history, advancing knowledge, expressing feelings and sending them abroad for others to share?

I fear I was convincing myself to buy the damn pen. The longer I postponed, the better the likelihood that someone else would buy the last one and remove the temptation. I am sure I was not the only one on the planet who, at that moment, was engaged in suffering a persistent desire for the pen and someone might step in, before my mind is made up, to snatch temptation away?

Later that day, I bumped into Steve at the Foodhall in the local Marks & Spencer department store. We were both foraging for our evening’s meal. I told him what had happened with Ken, that he of all people was instructing me to buy an expensive pen. I took out the mobile phone and showed Steve the pen. He didn’t like it. I didn’t buy it.

Mr Bentzman will continue to report here regularly about the events and concerns of his life. If you've any comments or suggestions, he would be pleased to hear from you. 

You can find his several books at www.Bentzman.com. Enshrined Inside Me, his second collection of essays, is now available to purchase.