I attended the Brooklyn Book Festival a few weeks ago on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. Two other She Writes Press authors and I had a fruitful day talking to readers and selling our novels. When a friend of mine stopped by to purchase a copy of EDEN, I took an extra moment to write a special inscription before signing my name. She showed her young nephew the page I had just personalized and, to my surprise, helped him decipher the language as if it was hieroglyphics.
“Kids can’t read script these days,” she said.
That statement has stuck with me for weeks. If kids can’t read script, they obviously aren’t writing in cursive either. Gone are the days of lined paper and elementary school lessons in handwriting. What a shame, because the act of writing, freely, by hand, with flow, is a cathartic, wonderful experience. Will the only option for future generations be to use a keyboard? Along with the artistic flare of handwritten verse, we’ll such a beautiful glimpse into a person’s personality...
Having saved many of my mother’s personal belongings, one of the things that still jolts my heart when I glance at it, is her tattered address book, filled with entries in her handwriting. Seeing her handwriting takes me back in time to a place where she mailed me letters, left me notes, jotted grocery lists. Her handwriting is so uniquely hers, pretty, casual, loopy, easy, educated. (A natural lefty, my mother was trained to write with her right hand in a classroom in the 1950's where her left hand was tied to the chair.) There are also cards and letters delivered by the mailman that make a smile spread across my face upon recognizing the handwriting on the envelope. (Snail mail, can you believe it?)
There is definitely a feminine style and a masculine style of cursive. There’s a well-mannered style, and a rushed style. A good friend of mine might expand more on this topic as he recently confessed that his shtick analyzing hand-writing on cocktail napkins has become a successful conversation starter in bars…. Wink wink.
People often ask me where I like to write and if I have a routine. I do have a routine, but sometimes my most creative moments are when I buck the routine, get out of the house, and write free hand in a moleskin journal. I can rif for several pages on a minor topic, or I’ll often pull the car over and write part of a scene. Guess what kids, script is fast, no need to lift the pen, and doesn’t require battery power!
An end cap to this handwriting obsession, came last weekend in Yom Kippur services. The rabbi’s sermon included a reference to Daniel at Belshazzar’s feast where he was the only one who could read the writing on the wall… thus coining the phrase….and being the only one at the feast who was able to warn the King that his days were numbered.
Will cursive become our generation’s secret code? A relic from the old days that only people of a certain age can read? I feel ancient just writing this blog. I make a real effort to live a young life, but when a kid stares at my book inscription like it’s something from Land of the Lost…. Oh my.
One of Jeanne’s journals