Pens, passion and obfuscation: a reflective essay by Nick Pichay

In this reflective essay by Nick Pichay, a childhood joke about “lapis and fountain pen” unfolds into a meditation on passion and the obsessions that shape a life

My first recollection of passion begins, oddly enough, with a joke. It was an opening greeting we children used to recite to one another with mock seriousness: “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, lapis and fountain pen…”

It was nonsense, of course. But like most nonsense, it revealed something true. Even then, I think I understood passion as something functional; something you used, like a pen, like language itself.

For a long time, I carried that idea. I thought passion was an accomplishment that you could list on a résumé to improve your chances of landing a job: “passionate about the law”, “passionate about the arts.” It sounded cool.

I am, after all, a lawyer and a playwright. Which suggests that I spend an enormous amount of time arguing with imaginary people in my head. That, I suppose, could pass for passion.

But somewhere along the way, that definition began to morph. Because passion, as I would later experience, is not something declarable. It is something akin to a creeping ocean tide that suddenly becomes a crashing wave over your head.

In my case, it began with two fountain pens.

I can say that the pens that attract me most are those that are a joy to hold and a sight to behold. But caring for them—inking, cleaning, guarding them from dents and drops—feels less like being their master and more like being their custodian.

No pen, however fine, improves my writing. If anything, it even memorialises my faults, where the errors appear as words stricken in dashes. I rewrite more. And more still when my mind and hand fall out of sync.

So why not just use a laptop?

My answer is always: No.

I have been told, repeatedly, that I own too many.

And in my head, I always answer: Please, tell that to the thousands who flock to the Manila Pen shows.

My Ate Dawn, a very practical nurse, once warned me: “You can only use one pen at a time.” She thought I had not considered this, as though the limitation were physical, when in fact, it is philosophical.

Because the truth is, when you buy a pen, you are not only buying a pen. A fountain pen is a visa granting entry into an obsessive world. A world of people who appear ordinary, but who carry within them an extraordinary devotion to an instrument whose lineage stretches from the caves of Lascaux to our own Tabon Caves.

I had owned a pen or two before, mostly for the Bar Exams. Back then, a pen was a necessity. A tool dictated by function.

But one night, I received a call from a friend, Jun Castro, head of the Fountain Pen Network Philippines. He was sending me a fountain pen. I was not there when it arrived. When I finally opened the box and saw the Aurora, it was love at first sight.

My planetary system shifted. An alignment transformed my understanding. The pen ceased to be merely functional and became an object of wonder, admiration and desire. I wanted more!

Not that I was ungrateful for the earlier pens gifted to me by my Tiang Caring—two vintage Sheaffers, which I had named Patience and Fortitude. But the Aurora was something else. It was the star that opened up the borealis.

Perhaps because I associated the Sheaffers with the discipline of preparing for and passing the Bar, I took them for granted. I have since then been remorseful. But the Aurora taught me something more enduring: not to take things or people for granted simply because they exist to serve my needs.

That realisation sparked the passion. I began doing all the things that many of fountain pen collectors have done and are doing.

I opened myself up to the delicious perils of collecting. I was doomed.

When nib meets paper: thoughts on passion and obfuscation (Photo: Pexels)

Above When nib meets paper: thoughts on passion and obfuscation by Nick Pichay (Photo: Pexels)

When nib meets paper: thoughts on passion and obfuscation by Nick Pichay (Photo: Pexels)

1 / 1

The pen draws me the way that a mystical ring draws its bearer. When I reach for it, I become invisible and the world recedes.

Where nib meets paper, a drama begins.

The page resists just enough to awaken the ink. Pleasure follows. Writing becomes a dance. Fluid at times, awkward at others. Even adversarial where differences arise.

And whatever emerges—a contract, a play, a love letter, even a holographic will—all these bear the mark of that mediation. All of it becomes a dialogue, a space where resistance is tested and resolved.

One might ask: Why more than one pen?

Because, I will reply that as in pens, as in tyres, as in love—a spare is always wise.

I admit, the reason for owning more than two fountain pens remains an enígma. Despite the expense. Despite reason. Despite the gentle protests of loved ones.

There is only one answer: Passion.

The law, for its part, has a more measured vocabulary for this. You might recall what we call crimes of passion. These are moments when emotion overtakes judgment, when a person acts not out of calculation or intent, but under an impulse so powerful that it clouds reason itself.

The Revised Penal Code provides:

Article 13 – Mitigating Circumstances:

That of having acted upon an impulse so powerful

as naturally to have produced

passion or obfuscation.

The law does not excuse the act. It does not say: You were passionate—go free.

It says: We understand. But no. You must answer for it in some way.

Passion, then, does not absolve. It explains, yes, but it does not excuse.

Passion to me is a force that narrows the world. It fixes the eye on a single object, a single idea, a single person, until everything else dissolves into nothing. It urges us forward, even when the signs are clear. Even if the people who care about us tell: Tama na!

And I recognise this force in something more ordinary: my obsession with fountain pens.

Like many of the fountain pen collectors, I have intently listened as others spoke of pens they have owned, traded or lost. I have worried over clogged feeds and misaligned tines, endured leaking barrels and I’ve proudly carried ink stains on my clothes and fingers.

In this, I begin to see passion not just as excess—but as resistance.

The pen, after all, has always been deemed mightier than the sword. It insists on expression where silence would be easier. It draws across, even when the page resists.

And I recognise that same perseverance elsewhere in my life—in the cases I take on, whether winnable or not; in the plays I cannot stop revising; in the work of public service, where expectations are high, and the challenges are legion.

In all these things, there is a refusal to surrender. Passion does that.

But at the same time, passion does not promise that one will succeed. Only that one will not have lived cautiously.

Aristotle cautions us against passion. In the Nicomachean Ethics, he speaks of balance or the need to temper emotion with intellect.

And intellect, if true to its function, teaches restraint. But too much intellect teaches us to hesitate, to calculate, to worry, to withdraw at the first sign of uncertainty.

Too much emotion, on the other hand, leads to obfuscation; to a wildness that urges us to leap without seeing.

In this dilemma, must we always choose balance?

A well-balanced life helps us admire the fire, but it can also prevent us from stealing it.

Balance makes everything easier. It keeps us safe. Yet, in this unpredictable world, maintaining it can be stressful. I think living within boundaries can make us small.

Often, the very quest for balance imprisons us, douses our fire and relegates us to insignificance.

For what is the purpose of reason, if we have no passion to exceed it?

Who among us has not loved dangerously, believed in causes too quickly,

or stepped out into the void before knowing what lies yonder?

Perhaps this is where passion becomes most human.

Passion in Article 13 of the Revised Penal Code does not excuse us.

And yet, passion softens the sharp edges of regret.

Regret does not come from the risks we dared, but from the challenges we were not too passionate to take on.

There is wisdom in Aristotle’s balance. But in its observance, there is also a life that slips quietly past it.

As for me, I choose a life lived with passion—like my fountain pens:

ink-stained, imperfect, sometimes blotched—but always looking forward to nib scratching paper; to test new ink; to see what words might emerge. To hope against hope that each stroke, each curl, each mark of imperfection will reveal what life has to offer.

That, to me, is passion.

NOW READ

The write stuff: Montblanc’s president for South Asia Jean-Sébastien Gerondeau on rediscovering the ‘quiet luxury’ of writing

Pico Iyer, the novelist, philosopher and global soul who travelled the world writing about it

The taste of identity: 8 Asian food writers who explore culture and history through a culinary lens