The lost art of Handwriting
This week’s entry is a lament for the loss of something beautiful and personal, but humanity goes on and finds new ways to express the moment. I follow this with a poem of similar nature. More of my poems can be found here….
I go to the mailbox and pull out a wad of mail. Shuffling through the bills and ads I find a letter with the address in the familiar handwritten lettering of a friend. I go sit down on the front porch in the warmth of the sun and carefully open the letter. The handwriting gently scrawls across the paper. I laugh at a doodle in the margins, and smile at my friend. That seems such a long time ago: a time before email.
I miss opening letters and reading the thoughts of friends and family through the unique scripts of each one’s hand. Bubbly large letters or tiny technical scratches, this can be so personal, the equivalent of the unique voices over the phone. Both, a pleasant substitute for the real when space and time separate family and friends. Today email is rapidly replacing (and in my world all but completely replaced) this wonderful art of communication. Each email is like the other. Times New Roman font displayed line after line. Only the name distinguishes the author. No random doodle. No feel, no smell, no stain of tea or drop of tear. So unreal and remote. A bit of humanity lost in a sea of one and zeros. Off – On. Black and White. No shades of gray, no person.
When reading history books or watching History documentaries, there are always images of love letters, personal correspondence and thoughts scribbled and mailed across town and around the world. Though no photo may exist one can still see a human and sense their spirit in the style of the handwriting. What of the author will people 100 or 1000 years from now gleam from the generic font? Was he drinking tea? Was she crying? Was it human?
It seems that handwriting, having been developed over 25,000 years, has all but been replaced within a few decades. It survives in to realm of art as calligraphy, but is slipping out of everyday use. It is barely taught in schools and is rarely needed, except for the shopping list. Handwriting and letters seem to be going the way of grandmas cooking; and, for the same reason: efficiency. But then, like good cooking, maybe writing will have a revival. There is an organization dedicated to the promotion of good home cooking called “Slow Food.” I think I should start one called “Slow Writing”, but then again maybe not. Since friends and family are scattered around the world, and on the move, snail-mail would always be one port behind.
Signed
Orion
pros
Romans vs Script
The Romans are coming
the Romans are coming
Marching single file
row after row
Individuality in script
gone, sacked
No more love letters
with your scent
The Romans so uniform
crisp and clean
No place for flowers
or odd placement of form
Convenience takes place of
careful loving hands
The pen though
mightier than the sword
Has fallen one by one
pushed over by naught
Displaced by the cold font
of Times New Roman
Tags: handwriting, poem, prose, writing