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Writing Sticks

It’s a coveted super-secret known only to writers, but I can share it with you. You have that “I vill tell no one,” look about you. We writers cannot write---without a cup, vase or ceramic oddly painted slouchy cowboy boot made by our Auntie M, set on our desk jammed full of an impressive array pens and pencils.

Yes, our cup-o-writing instruments is tantamount to a full barrage of underground missiles held in place in bunkers right next to dismantled bunkers that have been re-purposed and made into living quarters for those who do not wish to see the sunrise, or set upon mother earth. But I regress…

Even in this age of plastic covered electronic filled boxes with lighted screens that magically draw letters from fleeting fingers onto a blank page, without even so much as a whiff of pine pencil shavings or the taste of chewed erasers, we still need that pacifier that holds yesteryears writing instruments.

It’s not often, but when there’s a super moon, all is quiet and we are alone with our straight as soldiers little writin’ friends, we clean out our coveted cups. When, for the umpteenth time, we have reached for a pen that is too dry to make a mark on a page without gouging the paper, because writers think pushing harder will make ink appear. Maybe a nonchalant grab produces the same broken pencil over and over. After all we writers are just too full of ourselves to stop and sharpen pencils for Heaven’s sake! In said pencil’s defense it is not broken at the tip, it’s broken up inside the barrel. By holding it just right one can still jot notes to remind us of fleeting thoughts we might want to expand on later. For some unexplained reason as we get, let’s just say more mature, those notes take the place of the gray matter in our heads that we used to use to remember. Regressing again…

The “clean-out” can be described as a discovering-reunion-love-hate-funeral event.

Discovering the Mont Blanc pen you found is a fake. Damn!

You have a reunion with that lime green pencil which for some reason has always felt just right.

You fall in love all over again with the nifty double-clicker on the pen you accidently brought home from your friends’ office.

You are reminded that you hate, well hate is such an extreme word, maybe intensely dislike, trips to the dentist but are reminded of him by the pen with an incisor as a clicker. Magically it’s been redeployed from his cup-o-pens to yours.

Lastly you have a funeral for all those writing sticks that just cannot be saved. No matter how many times you stick pen tips into fire to try to entice the ink to come out. Alas some pencils are too short to be sharpened or haven’t even a hint of eraser left. Moving on…

After tears are shed for those lost, we begin again to fill’er up.