JohnnySwims

Birth? Barely had I bought a bottle of Baystate before its… Blue. A hue too true to be at the end of any queue, quickly it would… Imbue. “Ack!” said blue-black, the rack’s quack taken aback by ink feathers on… Paperback. Pens postured perfect, poised for a perished purpose permanently… Placental.

Be lazy and imprecise! Sure. It might feel quite nice... Gaze out at sky blue, "Go West!" the birds flew-  Look back, I still have an ICE.

     In keeping with the theme of my blogs, it would be an interesting challenge curate a selection of inks across his different phases instead of making a Spotify Wrapped for him. So, as a result of far too much time (and money) poured into this hobby, these are the inks I think Siddhartha would’ve had in his pens at each stage. Brahim - Pilot Iroshisuku Kon-Peki     Siddhartha, during his Brahmin phase, lives a Kon-Peki lifestyle. There’s nothing tangible that Siddartha can point at and say is lacking. Siddhartha is rich, well-respected, and ridiculously good-looking. Kon-Peki is very much the same; it’s reliable, wet, and has a beautifully deep sky blue on any paper. The “issue” that arises with both lifestyles is that it fosters an underlying dissatisfaction with the smooth sailing it has to offer. Fountain pen users want more out of their inks. Shading, shimmer, and sheen dominate many of the most popular inks on the market. Siddhartha believes that the env...

Dear Tom,      I don’t think that I can deal with the monotony that I create anymore. Like clockwork a new alarm is set, and each successive high-pitched buzz in the morning is indistinguishable from the gavel that signifies a continuation of my labor. The grip of oppression is asphyxiating, in the hands of a tyranny my existence is spent in vain attempts to create a higher essence. My torture is unrelenting and unpredictable, futile preparations for the future seems to leave me devastatingly unprepared in moments I need them most. The cold that accompanies my winters is bitter and numbing, and I feel the juices of creativity contract inside of me. The apparatuses that lay out my creation seem unaligned with the product I was tasked to produce. Thoughts appear underfoot, meaning unclear and forming fractals upon an otherwise empty slate for expression. My current ink, and my most coveted ink      This perhaps is a bit more foreign to you, a quintessentially...

     My sister carries that journal with her everywhere, and frankly… I don’t understand the habit. I think it’s funny to watch her as she moves about her life and scribble furiously in the journal when she has downtime. She writes about (what I assume to be) her life like a dementia patient desperately clinging onto the last bit of continuity left in their life. She doesn’t share it with anyone — she nearly killed me the last time I touched it — and doesn’t post about it online, either. It truly is a personal hobby for her. I mean seriously, why would anyone ever journal...      To me, it’s a misallocation of her time and resources that could be spent on more intellectual pursuits, scrolling on TikTok or shopping online are good examples. What could be so enrapturing about a journal (a diary for the more cynical) that anybody would carry it around like an extension of their body? There is no world found inside the binding of that journal, it’s simply an ec...

In the short story Memento Mori , Earl (the main character) recalls elementary school when his “day planner was the back of [his] hand”. Ever since his development of “backwards amnesia”, he’s come to the unfortunate belief that “The best way to [live] is with a list”. The way I see it, the only thing that’s working backwards here is Earl pedantic philosophizing about life and organization, not his memory. Although that’s derived from my zealous need to justify an inordinately well vetted and sized Techo Kaigi , that is my planner/journal line-up.   Stemming from a slight (?) obsession with the weekly layouts , I have a multi-national lineup of flagship models that break my time into bite-size chunks for me to fill and exercise discretion over. In a way, I suppose that makes me more similar to Earl than it does alienate me from him. Where a numbered checklist suffices for his 10-minutes explorations, my elaborate Kaigi ward my amnesia to only strike weekly. His so affectionately ...