A true narrative inspired by my recent reading of the works of Nikolai Gogol. It’s not overtly Gogolian, but I tried to incorporate some elements of his style.
I’ve been using the same pencil for about 500 days now. My sister gave it to me. It’s a green, 0.5mm Twist-Erase, not that the details really matter. The branding is faded, and I replace the graphite and eraser pretty regularly. Still, it’s a good pencil. I use it to take notes in class. I use it on exams. I use it to journal, to diagram, to sketch, to scribble grocery lists, to write letters. Essentially, if I need to mark something with a pencil, I use this one.
Holding onto this pencil hasn’t been easy. Back in grade school, I would buy packs of 48 pencils at the beginning of every school year because, by the end, I would have lost each and every one. If there were a leaderboard for losing pencils, I would be internationally ranked. Despite my penchant for losing pencils, I never seem to lose notebooks or journals. Knowing this, I fastened my pencil to my journal, and whenever I needed it, I would remove it from the elastic, use it, and return it to its place. When it was time for me to retire that journal, I simply replaced it with another, and I kept the pencil there.
As of recently, I have discovered that my pencil is slightly shorter than my phone, so it fits in my pocket quite nicely. I like the idea of always having the pencil handy, but I still wanted a notebook for it, so I made one. The cover of the notebook is made from an old poster of Café Terrace at Night, and it fits snugly in my pocket, just between my leg and my phone. The pages of the notebook are covered in diagrams and equations from my observations of the equinox sunset and the solar eclipse, all drawn by the pencil.
A brief aside, pen and pencil don’t have the same etymology. While pen comes from the Latin penna, meaning feather, pencil comes from the Latin penicillus, meaning brush. Penicillus has its roots in the Latin word for tail, not feather. As it turns out, penicillus is also the origin of the name of the antibiotic, penicillin. I like to imagine that Alexander Fleming was recording his observations with a pencil when he discovered penicillin, though that may just be wishful thinking.
I don’t think my pencil will ever be used to document anything as monumental as the discovery of penicillin. The pencil is great—don’t get me wrong—but I do sometimes wonder what impact the pencil has had on my discoveries. How would my research be different without that pencil? What about my art? I suppose I can’t know for sure, but I doubt much would change. Pencils only mark what you tell them to mark, erase what you tell them to erase. They can’t tell you the answer or finish the story; that’s something you do. Besides some negligible improvements to quality-of-life, the pencil itself doesn’t do much of anything.
I was hoping that after so many months using the same pencil, I would gain some profound insight, as if the pencil would reveal some previously unknown truth. I waited, diligently recording my thoughts and observations through this single instrument. I’ve carried it in my bag or on my person during every waking moment. Today, I’m writing this story because that day has finally come. I now know the truth. After 500 days, I’ve finally learned that it’s just a pencil.