Pencils

It's been a long time since I looked at a pencil. Do you remember the days when a good sharpener would peel of a curling swathe of fresh and aromatic wood, exposing sharp and shiny black pencil lead? It seems such a long time ago now.

I'm sure that I've sharpened many pencils and used many pencils since then, but my strongest memories of pencils come from primary school days. I remember what I thought of as 'pencil-sharpening parties', when kids would gather around the big waste bin in the corner of the classroom to sharpen pencils, gossip, and engage in discussions about whether long pencils were nicer than pencil stubs.

There was this guy who loved short pencils. He would either sharpen them repeatedly just to whittle them down to size, or he'd actually break his pencils in half when new and sharpen them into two half-size pencils. I asked him why he did this. He replied that he found long pencils to be a waste of length. Hrrrrm.

I remember my grandfather sharpening his 6B pencils with a knife. It was fascinating to watch him shape the tip with a few well-placed strokes. He never used a sharpener; he hated having pencils with tips that were too sharp and might break. He shuddered at the idea of a 0.5 mm mechanical pencil, although he didn't mind the older kind which could hold a thicker lead.

There is a kind of romance with pencils. They are like the last vestige of a time before efficiency drives and the hard, manic insanity of a certain kind of working life. Pencils seem to say that there is still a sort of space in the unfolding of time, that you can watch the world and record it through the imprecision of a pencil better than through the digital accuracy of a modern camera. To this day, I've not forgotten how to sketch with a pencil.