Penmanship

The thermometer in my office reads 90º.  A far cry from the winter’s snow and howling winds.  The decks always have a breeze and shade but I can’t see the computer screen well enough outside. So here I sit with pen and paper…and it feels foreign.  I posed a question to the universe last night, sitting on the back deck in the moon light, “What will my night sky look like in one year from this exact moment?”  I ask that question often; it reminds me to be present in the moment.  I wish I had done it more in the past, especially when my kids were young.  The years have disappeared before I took note of all the nuances.

OK, now my hand is cramping.  How did I used to do this for hours on end?  What happened to my flowing penmanship, learned from the green border that festooned every childhood classroom – just above the chalkboard.  The Palmer Method of Cursive Writing; all those beautiful loopy letters that magically entwined so the words just flowed along. Some part of every school day included the practice of perfectly shaped letters on special paper.  The sheets had dotted lines between the bold, horizontal lines  to indicate the correct height of upper versus lower-case letters.

I was going to work on my Eagles blog post, (the birds not the rock band) but the photos are on my desktop machine, sitting in my 90 degrees-with-the-fan-on office.  The glamorous life of a blogger.

Back to penmanship.  I used to think my hands could only keep up with the torrent of my thoughts aided by a perfectly pressure-sensitive keyboard.  But, as I sit and try to relax my grip enough to find my flow, the pen and paper method seem quite cathartic – almost creative unto itself.  My words have shape at the expense of readability.  I am more sparse and concise with the ink.

Doves coo, a piano solo drifts down from the office and a wisp of breeze pushes the page as I write.  I don’t know what twelve months from now will look like, so I think I will just treasure this moment.