Your signature, your handwriting is a sign of identity: It authenticates you. What does it mean to not teach cursive to youth today? It means to ignore a history of research on mind and hand, as if the pen or pencil you hold and which you move, is not connected to the mind and central nervous system.
I think of those who had to sign with an X, who were kept from being taught to read. Ishmael asks in Moby Dick, “Who ain’t a slave?” And the famous Russian physician & writer I so love, claimed it takes a lifetime to squeeze the slave out of oneself. Both Melville and Chekhov ask us a real question.
I know from personal experience that the personal essay requires reverie and asks a writer to “live in the layers, not the litter,” as poet, Stanley Kunitz wrote. Or as Virginia Woolf wrote, “Arrange whatever pieces come your way.” They won’t come your way if you’re not there to receive them. Make writing a habit. Simon and Garfunkel sang, “Slow down, you move too fast, you’ve got to make the non-stop last.” They sang “morning,” but the same is true for free writing! Just move that pen or pencil in your hand. Give the rudder over to the current, allow yourself to drift in open ocean or a wide bay. And remember that “memories are by their nature, fragmented, isolated, and arbitrary, as glimpses one has at night through lighted windows.” I wish I had written this and apologize to the person who penned this sentence… for not noting his or her name.
I disliked essays in both high school and college. Blue books, timed tests. As a literature major, I was supposed to know (before reading the question) what I was going to say, then write as quickly and clearly as possible, sans re-vision unless I wanted to make a mess of the blue book. I never heard of writing as a process until the Bay Area Writing Project at U.C. Berkeley in the late 1970s. I remember the forbidden use of “I” while in high school and writing five paragraph essays with a thesis statement, pretending to know something I did not understand. Now I know and honor words from a medieval mystic, Meister Eckhart, who died in 1326 in France. Please note I have taken liberty with Eckhart’s use of men and substituted, humans.
“That I am, this I share with other humans. That I see and hear and that I eat and drink is what all animals do likewise. But that I am I is only mine and belongs to me and to no one else; to no other human, not an angel, not to God, except in as much as I am one with God.”
Last week the noiseless spider.
Next week a tiny flower (Impatiens) between a rock and a hard place.
Gail,
My current favored candidate for "Best Sentence Ever" is “memories are by their nature, fragmented, isolated, and arbitrary, as glimpses one has at night through lighted windows.” I don't remember what the previous contender for this prize said, and I suspect that a superseeding candidate will come along at some point in the future, but for now I vote "yes!" for this one. Thank you.
John