When AI Whispers in Ink

As one month ends and another begins, I find myself performing what has become a private ritual with two pens from my unusually large collection of fountain pens. These are not the sober instruments that sign checks or pen manuscripts—those steadfast companions are already loaded with respectable blues and blacks, the colors of responsibility.

These are my fun pens. Their purpose is less defined, more whimsical. They exist to chase thoughts across paper, to write down a memorable quote or a silly tweet, to trace the outline of a remembered conversation. They capture fragments of wisdom overheard at the corner store. They are tools that follow wherever the mind meanders, ideal for doodling or simply for my scratches that pass as art.

Being the kind of person who prefers late autumn and deep winter, I’m often confused by spring and what it brings. Spring, especially in its early stages, is a season of mild confusion. Can I wear sneakers? Should I leave my sweater at home? In San Francisco, where I live, the air forgets its temperature from hour to hour.

And I, for my part, can never quite decide what colors to choose. Autumn offers easier company—russets, ambers, the comfort of things winding down. But spring is slippery, full of beginnings that don’t declare themselves. T.S. Eliot said it best: “April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.”

In such moments, I do what any indecisive person might do: ask for advice. Several pen friends weighed in, each with an eye for color and a fondness for naming their preferred shades. Their suggestions, while lovely, weren’t entirely helpful.

Then, almost as a joke, I asked ChatGPT.

The machine responded with alarming composure. It suggested pastel colors for April: spring bud, cherry blossom, April showers — names better suited for nursery wallpaper or scented soaps. I squinted at them. Though pleasant, they weren’t for me. I wanted a more sophisticated palette, whatever that means. So I asked for a revision.

Sam Altman’s machine returned with something sturdier: moss green, graphite, and oxblood. “Colors with boots on,” is how the machine described them. This, the machine seemed to say, was April as it actually feels—wet earth, cold sun, the stirrings of something determined. I laughed aloud, not because it was wrong but because it was projecting masculinity. I wondered if the machine was trolling me.

When asked again about April’s appearance in Northern California, where the hills transition abruptly from green to gold, the AI responded with poetic restraint. Its palette read more like a collection of moods than mere colors: Marin Hills (sage green), Pacific Fog (dusty blue), Dry Grass Under Sun (golden ochre), and Coastal Cypress (deep teal).

From that palette, I chose two inks from my collection. I chose “Ocean Beach,” a custom ink blended for me by Kiwi Inks of Los Angeles that is a dusty blue-gray that carries the weight of overcast mornings. For the deep teal, like the shade beneath cypress trees in Point Reyes, I went with Diamine’s Tarrif Teal.

What surprised me most was not the machine’s intelligence (which is easy enough to marvel at), but the quiet way it handed back a piece of the world. Its palette didn’t describe April in grand terms. Instead, it was poetic and almost literary, taking cues from the light, the soil, and the ordinary shapes of change. In doing so, it reminded me that the season is not something we wait for but something to observe and experience.

It seems a small thing to fill two pens with ink. But in the doing of it—asking, choosing, pausing—I remembered that everything arrives gradually. Though April has a sudden way of announcing itself. Or as Mark Twain reminds us: “The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.”

March 29, 2025. San Francisco.

PS: You could never have this kind of interactive fun with “search” as we have known it. And that is why, the new way is going to be a problem for Google.