Word: penning
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Toad ever put pen to paper, it was reluctantly, to scribble in the margin of a college textbook ("Hmmmmm" or "Sez who?" or "Ha!"), or to write a check. Over the years, Toad's handwriting atrophied, until it was almost illegible. Who cared? Sonatas of language, symphonies, flowed from the Smith-Corona...
...Toad perforce persisted. It had been years since he had formally and respectfully addressed blank paper with only pen or pencil in hand. He felt unarmed, vulnerable. He thought of final exams long years ago--the fields of rustling blue-book pages, the universal low, frantic scratching of pens, the smell of sour collegiate anguish...
Toad found himself seduced, in love, scribbling away in the transports of a new passion. Toad was always a fanatic, of course, an absolutist. He bought the fanciest fountain pen. His word processor went first into a corner, then into a closet with...
Toad thought of Henry James. For decades, James wandered Europe and the U.S., staying in hotels or in friends' houses. He was completely mobile. He needed only pen and paper to write his usual six hours a day. Then in middle age, he got writer's cramp. He bought a typewriter, and, of course, needed a servant to operate the thing. So now James was more and more confined to his home in Sussex, pacing the room, dictating to the typist and the clacking machine. James became a prisoner of progress...
Toad, liberated, bounded off in the other direction. Light of heart, he took to the open road, encumbered by nothing heavier than a notebook and a pen. Pausing on a hilltop now and then, he wrote long letters to Ratty and Mole, and folded them into the shape of paper airplanes, and sent them sailing off on the breeze...