365 True Things: 94/Writing (6/30/15)

This post was prompted by my being without my laptop for a day, and having to prepare my blog post by hand. I very rarely write by hand anymore, so this felt like a challenge. And indeed, I waltzed around from one thing to the next for a while before I arrived at my topic for the day. When I'm on my laptop, in contrast, I usually just start writing, and something vaguely coherent emerges. So this was an interesting exercise. The following is based on what I wrote yesterday by hand, and I am editing as I go.

Sometime when I was a teenager, I radically changed my handwriting. Was it when I was in school in Germany? I sent postcards home to my parents that year, and can easily check (since I believe I kept those cards, saved by my mother). Or it might have been in junior high, or when I got back from Germany—eleventh grade, when I felt like a misfit, an outsider.

In any case, I abandoned the old cursive—round, connected letters—and switched to a print hybrid. Which over the years has loosened up, though I still write a tidy page, with straight lines and all more or less the same size. My handwriting now looks very much like my father's writing did, and also like my brother's. Can handwriting be genetic?

Several years ago, I took a class called "Your Handwriting Can Change Your Life!" with Edward Espe Brown (of Tassajara Bread Book fame) at the Green Gulch Zen Center in Marin County. No, I'm not woo-woo, but yes, sometimes I like doing goofy stuff like that—and Green Gulch is an amazing retreat spot, and Edward Espe Brown is a hoot. It was totally fun.

Relying on a book by Vimala Rodgers (with some Brownian variations), he had us practice each letter of the alphabet while he described its attributes. I'd forgotten what the various letters meant until I looked the book up just now.

He instructed us, for example, to cross our t's (the "letter of the visionary") high up—in fact, not a cross, so much as a lower-case capital T (which I can't bring myself to do: I just stick to crossing high up), and to make the ascender nice and long: closer to the sky, for spirituality. Capital A's should be in the shape of a star (because we are stars! though again: I go only halfway on that one). He taught us to make lower-case f's (the "letter of using one's talents in service to others") that reach both high and low and loop a lot—surging into the future with plenty of spirit and grounding both.

It's almost tempting to say, "I'd like to be more openminded; I think I'll work on my U's," or "I need more balance, I'll work on my s's." As if it were so easy. But Edward Espe Brown insisted it is.

After we'd practiced awhile, Edward came around and critiqued us all. He gazed a long while at my writing, suggested the starry A's and loopy f's, but otherwise said I shouldn't change a thing. That felt validating: made me happy. I'm almost perfect just as I am! Or at least my handwriting is.

I did sort of try to change my f's after the workshop—but I just can't bring myself to loop the ascending part. It reminds me too much of the cursive writing I threw over all those years ago. Now I loop the descender, but the upper half of the letter is a straightforward, no-nonsense downward line. I also still use a printed-letter f. The variability: a sign of confusion or flexibility? Take your pick. 

And usually, I'm even able to read my writing. Which is the point in the end, after all.