My days are sandwiched in darkness. Every morning shines a damp and lambent greeting from a rain-streaked windowpane. The street outside glows wetly, it brightens slowly with the cloud cover as the sun comes up and pales everything to a lighter shade. As I drive to work, quietly humming to the split-splat of water on the windshield and the swish-swish as the silver ribbons are wiped and renewed from the glass, the streetlights are just turning off. I’ve been barely taking 15 or at the most 20 minutes for lunch lately, it’s been so busy and with the clouds hunkered over us silently dripping, I’ve had little temptation or will to walk. By the time I’m advancing down the pavement from the office to the car, I’ve pulled my hood up to keep the rain off and am drenched in darkness again, peppered only with the shine of streetlamps, those night-blooming blossoms.
Karin and Martin answer “Sushi!” with enthusiasm and tenacity to every casual what do you want for dinner? Eating out is a weekend treat, however, and unfortunately there is seldom any left in the fridge at work when I leave so my attempts to bring it home for dinner are most often thwarted. Tonight, when I arrived home, Anders was in the midst of preparing dinner for the kids. When I asked what he was making, he triumphantly declared, “Korv Sushi!” 😀 The kids had requested miso soup (which has been growing on them since their initially doubtful tasting) and he had rolled leftover rice into balls and carefully sliced up hotdogs to set atop them, with peeled and thick hexagonal cucumber slices as garnish. Needless to say, the kids were delighted.
How often do you handwrite anything any more? I used to assiduously cultivate my handwriting…I loved practicing the dips and swirly curliques of the letters that swept below the line and the scarfy wave of crossbars. Martin is learning cursive writing in school, but it seems times have changed or else his teacher is just weird. He was doing his homework a few days ago, writing out in cursive 3 sentences from a lesson and I stopped him several times and made him show me the mechanics of the way he was writing because it looked so laborious and overly complicated. It’s always been my understanding that cursive handwriting evolved because it was FASTER and EASIER than block printing letters. But some of the letterforms he was so carefully tracing were definitely neither. When I asked him about it, and showed him a simpler, speedier way to write them, he said he was only following his teacher’s instructions and her answer the next day to my question through him, was that cursive writing has changed since we parents (and by we parents, she apparently means the ancient, elderly, hidebound traditionalists of yore) learned it. *lifts one eyebrow, barely restrains eye-rolling action*
I’m glad they are learning cursive (of sorts) though, since I have heard that it’s rarely taught nowadays due to the fact that children rarely write after a certain age. They type, instead. Although, it does not necessarily follow that they LEARN typing…at least not touch-typing like I did. But really, when I think about it, how often do I handwrite anything myself?
- I jot down staples and necessities on the grocery list.
- I keep a written, running to-do list at work, because it gives me such great pleasure to draw BIG RED WAVY LINES through the projects I finish.
- I sign my name to things (and I have a moviestar signature, also carefully worked on as a teenager).
- I address envelopes…once in a while.
Yeah. Not much else other than that, most of the time. Even when I’m writing poetry or journal essays I am most often to be found screen-front-and-center.
What with the blog and online journaling phenomenon, it does make me wonder how many people actually take the time to write WITH A PEN, ON PAPER anymore. For years I had a writer’s callus on the first knuckle of the middle finger on my left hand from my overly zealous grip on writing instruments (and ink pens and paintbrushes). I get a wicked writer’s cramp now, though, if I write for very long. What’s worse: writer’s cramp or carpal tunnel syndrome?
Like cursive was to handwriting, typing is so much faster and easier that of course it is to be preferred as the method of choice for getting our messages across, our ideas out there. And while pen on paper may be artistic and cozy and intimate and personal, it’s a much slower and less accessible medium here and now than the clickity whipping of thoughts via keyboard through cyberspace to you. Catch!
Really Great Writing Out There Right Now: This Thanksgiving House
Bebopalula, It’s Your Birthday! Beboppity Birthday Wishes to dbrus!