The Write Stuff

A funny thing happened on the way to choir drop-off Wednesday night: due to a change in plans, I ended up without my MacBook. This was significant because, since my two oldest daughters' children's choir rehearsal is just far enough from home to weekly justify spending two-and-a-half glorious hours in a very quiet part of a county library to write, it doesn't take much convincing for me to "take one for the team" and do the drop and pick-up. On Wednesday night, I'm happy to serve.

Still, the problem: no computer. What was I thinking? Should I go home, get it, and come back? Seemed silly, but this was my writing night (it's not like I get to do this every evening).

Not wanting to waste the time driving, I pulled into the library parking lot, grabbed some paper from the floor of the van (there was - and always is - plenty), found a pen, and walked in the door strangely giddy at the prospect that I was about to publicly go "old school" by putting pen to paper to crank out some content. I anticipated the scrawl sound of my Pilot Precise V5 rolling ball scratching across the paper. I recalled the joy - yea, even the novelty - of not having to delete wrong words and phrases before continuing, as I could just scribble them out and keep moving forward.

I found a table. I sat down. I spread out the paper. I pulled out the pen. I wrote. Somewhere Wendell Berry smiled...and it was good.

"I don't do this enough," I thought, moving my right hand almost - but not quite - silently over the flat surface of paper on table. I had no desire to do anything else but to embrace my kinesthetic side and write, letting my words come not just from my brain but through my body as well.

This was not a foreign sensation to me. I was 15 years an avid hand-journaler before I crossed over to the kinesthetic Dark Side of blogging nearly ten years ago, but even my experience now seemed novel, for I was writing on loose-leaf paper that was indeed as loose as leaf gets, having been ripped out of the crumpled notebook in the van.

In my handwritten habit of the past, I usually wrote into bound journals, but I was hesitant to write without some degree of concern that what I wrote needed to look somewhat presentable should I die and someone (God forbid) read my journals. I was a victim of the literary version of thinking that if you're going to be in an accident, at least have on clean underwear. Like a new pair of tighty-whities, my journal writing was clean...but it was tight. But no more!

But then I stopped. My left brain caught up with my right brain long enough to bring to mind articles - myriads of them, it seemed - with titles meant to remind me of my position in this world of twenty-first century and the land of all things digital. Having found their way to me because I'm a teacher, the articles psychologically attacked my handwriting bliss with their theses of why "Some Blogs I Like, and Why Teachers Should Be Using Them," and why handwritten expression should not even be considered as part of "21st Century Excellence."

I recalled an article I read just a few weeks ago about wired Chinese college students who could not remember how to write out their language because they were so used to typing pre-formed characters that their hands physically - kinesthetically - once learned to form, and that's when I wondered: Was I the last person in the world - at that moment - writing by hand? Was I the last hand standing?

I thought of my four daughters, all to whom Megan and I have stressed the importance of good handwriting AND proper typing skills (not to mention fundamental English grammar instead of text graffiti). They're learning the aforementioned joy of free writing, scribbling, and progress that handwriting provides as well as the digital version of diction that the educational elites are hurriedly hurtling us toward.

At least I thought they were learning. Weren't they learning?

I hoped so, but then the thought crossed my mind: were they learning from my enjoyment of writing - from my experience of the convenience of the scribble; the brevity of the note; the flow of the letter? Did they even know what Dad's handwriting looked like? Could they read not only the meaning of my handwritten words, but the subtext beneath their father's flair? Could they do so in a personal letter from me in the future? Would they even know what a letter - a personal, intimate, handwritten letter that crinkled at one's touch and so often smelled of its sender - was?

I wondered. And I wonder.

So many ideas; so many dilemmas. And all this because I forgot my computer on the Wednesday night choir run. What post might I have come up with otherwise if I'd been able to type? I have no idea, but here's what this one looked like before my keyboard took all the fun out of it.