Daring to write it out

It is no longer a subject worthy of debate. My writing is terrible. I've often introduced myself to friends and family as a writer of "tho con coc" -- which in Vietnamese doesn't even say much for the quality of the writing. But I'd like to think what is still undecided is the reason why it is truly bad. Some of my dear friends (and mentors for that matter) will gently remind me that my writing suffers from lack of originality, style, skill, oh all those little things that everyone loves so much. My enemies will say it's because of lack of originality, style, skill, and all those other things people love so much. (And they may say so in the context of a workshop critique or a casual conversation -- "Oh yeah, your last poem wasn't so good" -- but it's still the same.) If you've read my blog until now, you may be in agreement.

But, cac ban oi, dau phai nguoi nao cung la mot nha van! Khong phai nguoi nao cung la mot thi si! Dung voi dismiss nha tho "con coc" nay nhe... "Effort" doesn't count so much in the real world as it did in the graduate writing program. No publisher or editor selects a poem or collection because it demonstrates "effort". (Or do they?) I think I've suffered and my polite, kind readers have suffered b/c I do not have the proper writing tools... No, I don't mean the "creative arts" or the "inspiration" or the "muse". Sometimes, it's just as simple as the pen.

So when I read about the Fisher Space Pen, I knew immediately that this was a pen worth investigating. The various space pens (especially the AG-7) writes in 0 gravity, writes underwater, writes at any angle, writes upside down, and writes under extreme temperatures. The FSPs come in different colors and sizes -- there's even one in titanium.

How often have I wished that my writing could be improved simply by changing my writing utensil? In fact, a poem scribbled in graphite feels differently than a poem typed on the computer. Sometimes it is the only difference between smooth and elegant versus staccato and jam-packed. It's the ony difference between writing lineated verse and writing prose poems. With a pen, I'm setting everything in concrete, and that's not b/c the gel inks dry so quickly. Indelible but already history.

You think John Hancock understood the significance of his signature? Yes, but he probably thought very little of the tool he used to sign his name. The "pen" he used may be nothing more than a feather squib, but it allowed him to write in that smooth elegance, a testament created by the flourish of his name on parchment...

You'll have noticed that the pen writes underwater and in 0 gravity. (Alright folks, I know I'll never be in 0 gravity but hey you never know.) What the pen promises -- and oh, what sweet promises they are -- is that should I ever find myself in extreme situations, I will still have the ability to create, which in a small way encourages me to be creative. Be productive. Be daring. Be bold.

Which is why the Fisher advertises that astronauts use these pens. Space travelers, explorers, scientists. All the people I am not, doing the things I am not doing -- but CAN do. Look, American astronauts use them so they must be great, and America loves you. Buy our products.It's slightly terrifying that I'm both disgusted and fascinated by these mind games. Mostly b/c I am so weak-willed that I cannot stop myself.

Believe you me I have never fooled myself into believing that a pen is going to make me into a space-walker or an oceanographer. Not for a second did I think this thing would make my writing better (haha, it will need much more than that!), but it's the game we play with ourselves. We dare to think that there is some thing that will make us better than who we are. We dare to dream of going to the moon, of going to Mars, of discovering supernovas. We dare to love. Even when we only have a scrap of paper and a stub of a pencil, we could even dare to write about loving and how it nearly killed us. Whether with a pen or a feather or on a computer, we dare to write ourselves...