With Pen in Hand

The late Oliver Sacks was called "Inky" as a boy because he always had ink-stained fingers. He began keeping a journal at age 14 and had completed more than 600 of them by the time he died at the age of 82 in 2015. 

Sacks ended his autobiography On the Move with these words about writing's importance in his life:

The art of writing, when it goes well, gives me a pleasure, a joy, unlike any other. It takes me to another place — irrespective of my subject — where I am totally absorbed and oblivious to distracting thoughts, worries, preoccupation or indeed the passage of time. In those rare, heavenly states of mind, I may write nonstop until I can no longer see the paper. Only then do I realize that evening has come and I have been writing all day. 

 Over a lifetime, I have written millions of words, but the act of writing seems as fresh, and as much fun,  as when I started nearly seventy years ago.

In fact, he was writing with great clarity up until days before his died, his collaborator reported. "We are pretty sure he will go with a fountain pen in hand," she said.

I can't think of a better way.



(No photos of pens, but here's one of paper!)