First, my apologies for
the late post. I've been upstate, offline, and in traffic all day, which left
me with plenty of time to look out the window at the increasingly despondent
leaves and think about September.
I conclude that
September is for pencils.
With any luck, my days of education--at least the degree-bearing kind--are long
over, but each September, I still buy pencils, and notecards,
and sexy little notebooks,
and even sharpeners. This year, in a mood of slight mania, I even bought an
electronic
labeler.
But my heart in fall belongs
to pencils, because pencils are aspirational.
New Year's is for amateurs.
Pros know that the onset of fall is the real time for renewal, when the slow
lope of summer shifts into something more purposeful. And yet, fall.
In January, I'm so full of myself (and mincemeats), shiny in last year's tinsel,
making big plans. But come September, I've had nine months in which to know
myself better. Rake all you want, says September. The leaves are
still falling.
I admit it: I will not quit
smoking this year. I will not return to the gym--in fact, I probably won't even
get around to cancelling the membership I pay for every month. My "Miscellaneous"
file, however neatly labelled, will still bulge with things that belong elsewhere.
If I part with one book, I'll let in two more strays. Maxwell may spend his
mornings decluttering and sprucing, but I'm of a different breed. Some days,
it's all I can do to finish my second cup of coffee and the crossword.
So I need pencils, in their
own way as hopeful as crocuses. Upright and humble, my pencils are the saints
of half-measures, the mascots of revision. Give it a try, they whisper
encouragingly. We come with erasers.
Shannon
Photo credit: Shannon Holman
Ah, but the question is - do you store them points-up or points-down?
I love pencils but hate the mess they make on me since I'm left-handed and my hand always ends up smudged and grimy. It doesn't help that I prefer the softer leads! My favorite pencils were cheapies and had the brand 'Krazy Bones' stamped on them. I bought them at the grocery store when I was in college, but have never found them again. Hard to believe that's been almost 20 years... I still have a stub of one on my desk, and it's a little touchstone to that time when I thought I could conquer the world.
Shannon, this is one of my favorite posts ever: a perfect post about imperfection, realism, and hope. Thank you.
Like Tom Hanks said to Meg Ryan in "You've Got Mail," "I feel like sending you a bouquet of freshly sharpened pencils.
ooh this rings true for me, as a montessori 3-6 teacher i love new pencils, the smell, the feel as you sharpen them and hold them in your hand...and my children love them too!
Alas, they are not that great in the classroom, because the more you drop them, the harder they are to sharpen, the little points fall out of the sharpener with every twist of the hand...if only someone could invent the unbreakable colored pencil...
thanks for paying homage to pencils
i look forward to your next column