104

My pen is beautiful. My beautiful pen is orange. My orange Naoto Fukasawa designed Lamy pen. My Naoto Fukasawa designed model 282 orange – Lamy noto Ballpoint pen is a triangular thing of beauty to behold. The pen profile looks just like the San'yō Shinkansen (bullet train) that I am riding on towards Onomichi. The resolution of the pen clip problem is elegant and deeply, shockingly satisfying. I love looking at it as much as I like using it to trace rocks into my notebooks, but most of all, right now, I love holding it up against the window and imagining that there is a very special, one car, orange Shinkansen in the distance that is traveling in parallel at 285 km/h. My pen is a speedy little mikan.

87

The woman across from me on the Yamanote line took out her notebook and pen and started writing at the same time that I did. Her pen was also blue. I reflect on this. I wonder if she will put her notebook away at the same time I close my notebook? She didn’t. She put her notebook away before me, but it looks like she is thinking about taking it out again. I remain on the train three extra stops to see if this will happen. It doesn't. I get off the train at Ebisu station and as the train doors close, as the Hatsumelo theme from The Third Man plays, I cover my eyes tightly with both my hands and wish for her to take out her notebook again and write notes. The train pulls away and I sense a notebook emerging from the darkness of a bag and the possibility of a pen pressing into soft paper, leaving a line, as well as an indentation.

60

Three days ago I saw an exhibition of product designs by Naoto Fukasawa. The elegant pieces were reverently displayed and guarded as objects of significance. I wanted to write a note about a clever, inexpensive pen, but suddenly felt very odd when the pen I produced was the same as the one in front of me on display (and Pantone color matching system Orange 021 C too). It struck me as the equivalent of taking a pet to visit a zoo. Immediately afterwards I went to across the street to the MUJI store that Naoto Fukasawa often designs for and saw the same objects on display, but could touch and fondle them, even potentially break one. Then it felt oddly like taking a pet to visit a pet store.

1.5

I wake up all of a sudden. It is 2009, and Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2001 is playing on Inflight Television on the back of the seat in front of me. I pause the film at a frame where people in the movie watch films on the backs of the seats in front of them as they travel through outer space. The main character seems to have fallen asleep. For me, this is all transpiring in a jet somewhere over the International Date Line, where today is furtively changing into the future while passengers in the film also drift in and out of consciousness. The shift back to a depiction of the future in a movie made before I was born, which accurately predicts my current state is creating a dizzying, floating sensation, which is then promptly echoed in front of me in the film when a pen weightlessly glides by in front of the camera. I decided to watch the film for a bit in slow motion and reverse, but the complex mirroring and shifting in time gave me a surprising case of the giggles. I write a brief note in my journal and place my orange pen in my shirt's left pocket, hoping it will float out in front of my face once I fall asleep.