I don’t normally like to gush about a product—unless that product is paying me, of course. But sometimes, an object just speaks to you and demands to be celebrated.
The Pilot V5 Precise might as well be one of my fingers. There is a muscle memory that just seems to click-in when I take hold of the pen. Its body is .381” wide, a measurement my fingers just remember. And how the upper right pad of my middle finger grafts itself into the collar ribs, pinning the neck, in scrawls around paper.
For years, I wrote with the V7, which I didn’t know at the time, was far to thick. But, I didn’t like the thinness of the scratchy V5. Looking back through all my old journals, I find the text almost illegible, mostly because my handwriting is, at best, “urgent.” But the penlines are overly heavy, with ruddy, almost cartoon corners.
As I have aged, and the world around me seems to blur, I seek-out clarity, sharp corners and crisp lines. Maybe this explains my current fascination with photography: an overactive need to crank my view—manually, if need be—into focus. As such, the fine lines of the V5 are enormously gratifying. The thin draw of ink, solid and consistent, methodically bleeds the line.
The V5 was first lent to me the summer after high school. I’d used the pens before, but this was the first I used a pen to honestly write something. Of course, what I wrote with it was predictably terrible. But the pen and I had been joined. And that was twenty-two years ago.
We have shared a long romance.
While I am not nearly as neurotic about writing as I used to be (I like to think I’ve shrugged toward quality, rather than quantity), when I do take up my pen, even if I’m writing a grocery list, I feel that maybe, anything is possible. Probably it is only placebo. But I’ll take it—if only that I may be suitably equipped.
