Transducer of Thoughts

In 2003, I wrote a blog article entitled Seismography of the Mind. Today, I wish to elaborate further on the subject which I merely mentioned casually in passing while I was back in KL briefly before rushing back to Jakarta.

Perhaps what strikes me most about an article written almost 20 years ago is that how much of what I believe in now had already taken root in my mind then. I've always kept a handwritten journal and thoroughly enjoy the physical act of writing in longhand. I can easily discern my mood from my handwriting and to see thoughts materialising slowly in black wet squiggles on the crisp white page is like magic.

People who write journals are likely to be lovers of fountain pens and I have a collection of them, ranging from Parker, Mont Blanc, Cross, Waterman, Pelikan to lesser known ones (at least to people who are not familiar with fountain pens) like Benu, TWSBI and Kaweco. Writing in my journal is also an excuse to put these fountain pens of mine to good use. Furthermore I could choose from my wide selection of inks, which is one of the joys of fountain pen usage. 

It's true that fountain pens are messy and inconvenient. A ballpoint or rollerball pen does the job equally well without any of the hassle. Fountain pens require maintenance--you'll have to flush it in water and clean it thoroughly before filling it with another ink and often nibs don't perform that consistently. And if one accidentally drops it, it could be be ruined. Sometimes the ink doesn't flow so well, causing scratchiness or hard starts. Pens are like pets, with their peculiar mood and character, which is also what makes them endearing.

Of course, we all like to quote the cliche that the pen is mightier than the sword. There's no denying that the written word has a power that surpass that of any weapon that man has ever wielded. Nothing is more power than a thought whose time has come. Which brings me to my original intent of this article--that the pen acts like a transducer of thoughts.

What are thoughts anyway? Thoughts are like vibrations of the mind. The meditator observes these vibrations and watch them rise and subside, But why do they arise in first place? It's nothing but the energy of your karma.

Now as always, I'm veering into the esoteric. But hold your judgemental thought--which as you can see is triggered by what I just wrote: One signal arising from my mind inducing another in yours. A thought once introduced into the world, has its karmic effect. You cannot undo what you have read easily. You might forget it after a while, but its potency has already taken effect. Like a virus, it has already crept into your being, infusing every future thought you have with its echoes and residual effect.

The pen, especially the fountain variety, is a precision instrument that captures thoughts. A written sentence is a signal extracted from the noisy turbulence of the citta. A handwritten sentence captures not only the raw signal of the thought but also its attendant qualities in the shape and shade of one's ink-strokes. One's mood and character are captured together with the idea on the handwritten page.

Thoughts are occurring all the time in one's head. Just that most of the time, there's nothing of significance that one should put to the page. How does one separate the wheat from the chaff? By observing thoughts carefully, and capturing the signal from the noise. And what better instrument to do that than to use a fountain pen? It acts like a the stylus of a turntable in reverse, instead of transducing the the.tiny bumps on the record groove into electrical signals and sound, it picks up the signals of the mind and etches them into the page, in the form of ink marks.

Holding a fountain pen in one's hand, poised over a piece of paper, is the most magical pose of all: it is the act of creation itself. Something from the immaterial world of thoughts is about to born into the world. The writer is at once a midwife and a craftsman--ushering ideas into existence through a careful selection of words. What a privilege and joy it is to write with a fountain pen--the ultimate transducer of thoughts!