The prehistoric now

RECENTLY, while conducting a solo yoga session with a woman who was holidaying in Tobago for her birthday, she told me of her journalling practise and use of a fountain pen.

It struck me that I had not thought of or heard about fountain pens in decades. Something about her mention of it made me feel like having one, to once again experience that smooth, flow of cursive writing with the wet ink against paper. I think the instrument we use for writing (pen, pencil, ballpoint pen, computer) influences the way in which the mind constructs, processes and delivers words.

I was curious to see what kind of writing a fountain pen would inspire me to produce.

I went into a variety shop (Holly’s in Fortune Plaza) that is usually packed to the hilt with "everything." Discovering that they did not have any fountain pens, I wondered if anywhere else in Tobago would.

If Holly’s had a tagline, it might be something like: “If we don’t have it, no one else will.”

A few days later, while in a stationery store to get something photocopied, I asked the sales girl if they stocked fountain pens.

“What’s a fountain pen?” she responded. I gave a quick laugh and did not bother to explain about what is, apparently, the tyrannosaurus rex of pens.

The day before, I had asked on a Facebook status update if anyone knew where I could get a fountain pen in Tobago. One friend had responded – jokingly yet possibly seriously: “In a museum.”

A few years ago, I had gone looking for a hot water bottle in Tobago – the red, rubbery kind with the white screw top cap. I needed to use it as a heating pad (with a towel wrapped around it) to provide warmth for orphaned kittens that I was bottle feeding. I searched high and low, in drug stores and variety stores, but none of the shop attendants knew what a hot water bottle was. One drugstore attendant even brought me a baby’s bottle.

Last week I was in the mood to sing to strangers, and spontaneously delivered "singing telegrams" to two people who I encountered one day after the other – one, a man sitting alone under a tree on the beach, and the other, an elderly woman hobbling along the sidewalk with a stick.

On approaching the man, I prefaced my short song (“I hope you have a wonderful day; I hope everything is going your way”) by telling him that I would like to give him a singing telegram.

Afterwards, telling a friend about the experience and the lovely interaction with the gent thereafter, she said: “What if the people you approach don’t know what a ‘telegram’ is?”

I had not thought about that, but she had a point. In this era of e-mails, texts and WhatsApps, it, makes sense that some people might not know what a telegram is.

This reminds me of an occasion some years ago, when I was writing an article on snail-mail and asked a younger man a question related to the subject. To my surprise, he did not know what "snail mail" was; had never been into a post office; never bought or used a stamp and had never written, posted or received a letter.

Similarly, some "young" people now have never used cassettes and probably don’t know what a tape deck is. The same goes for a VCR. “What is a VCR?” they might ask.

Instead of the "old time" meaning of "video cassette recorder," maybe it would be a modern acronym for something like virtual cohabitation relationship where couples imagine "living together," online or "live" with self-created avatars so they do not have to deal with the potential complexities of actually having a physical, in-person relationship with a real human being.

I just thought of that acronym, but it is not far-fetched. A quick Google of the term revealed an article abstract on “Virtual cohabitation in online dating sites: a netnography analysis.”

With everything becoming increasingly virtual, there may come a day when someone might say: “Do you want to be in a relationship?” Their desired partner might respond: “What is a relationship?” It reminds me of a cartoon I saw years ago in which two children of about six years of age are sitting on the floor, playing with toys. One of the children says: “I found a condom on the verandah.”

The other replies: “What’s a verandah?”