Bone Black

Happy, Inky Halloween

I love carbon. It’s an atom whose electron configuration helps it form long complicated chains that become leaves and muscles, polution and diamonds. Carbon is the spine of all life on earth. Anything that was ever alive plant or animal or lichen is made of carbon. Carbon-based ink lasts forever, is found all through history, and it’s simple to make. Heat a handful of willow twigs up to very high temperature and then starve them of oxygen so that only the water and impurities burn away and watch your sticks become carbonized, and sparkle with with a new dense, velvety-black energy. Put any kind of stick or vine in a mint tin throw it in a campfire and you have bits of charcoal that can be ground down into ink.