It's a bad workman that blames his tools

I got off at Odéon in search of the last store in Paris to sell Moleskines. See, I believed all the marketing materials that moleskines were used by Hemingway, Van Gogh, and Matisse. And I had gotten one in Chicago - unaware of the "history" - and thought I'd check out what the pamphlet in the back of the notebook called "a Paris stationary shop in Rue de l'Ancienne Comédie".

They are certainly good notebooks - small, light, good paper, fold flat, and the pocket, which is useful. And the elastic and the bookmark - both useful.

And I like tools. Like, when I cook, I need the right tools. I can use canned chicken broth instead of homemade, and honey instead of sugar, but I simply can't make sautéed chicken cutlets without a non-nonstick pan, and tongs. And I can't make cookies without my stand mixer and parchment paper. And pot roast without a dutch oven (a cast iron dutch oven, please)? Forget about it.

So I walked down Rue de l'Ancienne Comédie but there was nothing there, at least no stationary shops. But, right off Rue de l'Ancienne Comédie, there was a street that was blocked off to cars and I found a store there with leather notebooks and quills and ink and all the artifacts of writing.

There was only one other person in the store and he was talking to the owner. When I came in, he looked at me and started speaking in a low voice as if he were plotting a revolution. Like all revolutions, this one would start with pens and paper.

I still had plenty of room in my Moleskine so I couldn't justify buying a new one. I looked at the calligraphy pens and the inks and the paper that was designed to greedily suck up the ink. I wished that I could write calligraphy so that when I write I would be sure that, even if the words were trite and banal, they would be beautiful.

I looked at the pens and saw one that I liked. It was black and heavy and well-balanced and the tip flowed easily over the paper.

It is important to have a good pen when writing. Or perhaps I just think it is. But once I had a good pen, I was pretty sure having a good pen was necessary. Just like a well-seasoned cast-iron skillet.

Environment, too, is important. I could not write before I came to Paris. I tried but I could not. In Paris I relearned how to notice things and see things, the way a child sees them, utterly novel and fascinating and foreign.

I bought the pen and got onto the metro again.