Found this button online, a steampunk theme with cursive writing. I do so little writing by hand these days that my penmanship is atrocious. But I do know how to write that way, and I well remember all the handwritten letters I received in my younger years (truth be told, I still have most of them, though I hope all the males to whom I ever sent letters have thrown all of mine away–or could send them to me, so I can roll my eyes at my younger self).
I already had journals and journaling on my mind when I was looking at buttons today. Yesterday, as I searched for my original essential oils inventory list, which I never found (finally just started a new one and input it to a computer doc, so I’ll know where to find it when I need it again), I opened a file folder that contained a tangle of embroidery thread and a ticket stub. I suspect the embroidery thread went with a cross-stitch piece I started back in the 1990s of a white cat sitting in a window (you can read about that in an old post here).
When the stitching remained unfinished, I finally wrote a poem about it and put the partially finished piece in a frame with the poem. It hung on my wall at The Compound for years, and now I have no clue where it is. I added it to my list of inexplicably missing items.
In the same folder, I found a ticket to a matinee showing of Star Wars: The Last Jedi from February 2018. That faded ticket, at least, I could put inside my current Moleskine.
As you can see, I’ve rarely used my Moleskines for capturing my sloppy cursive writing.
Like the one above, the Moleskines (and some are Moleskine knockoffs) are filled with mementoes of all kinds, and they get very fat; too fat for shelving. So they have a bin they go into when they’re full. I do still journal from time to time, but I mostly scribble a day’s events or thoughts in whatever kind of day planner or daily appointment book I keep.
Do you still handwrite your letters? Do you journal or keep a datebook or diary?
P.S. I have now reread all five of the TJB novels. I was amazed at how many things I’ve forgotten and how moved I could still be by those characters and their stories. This book, in particular, required a box of tissues right next to me. I kept having to close the book and cry.
Now I need to get back to The Musician in the Neverending Saga before he writes mean songs about my neglect.
I often think of When You Don’t See Me, as I often feel invisible.
I still write cursive letters, but not anywhere near as often as I would like. I have six A4 pages written to my penpal in Iceland and didn’t get to it at all this weekend just gone. I think future generations won’t be able to read cursive – or conduct research without the aid of a computer.
I was surprised how many things in When You Don’t See Me I’d completely forgotten.
I think many of us feel invisible in certain situations/company. I remember once telling a woman I worked with how extra weight, older age, and being female often made me invisible. And she countered, “Try being extra weight, older age, female, and Latina!”
It’s kind of weird to think of a certain kind of writing vanishing. However, when I look at medieval handwriting, I’m as lost as future generations may be looking at cursive writing. I think it’s Jeffrey Ricker who handwrites all his stories first, and then types them electronically. That wouldn’t work for me because my handwriting is often unreadable, and I’ve been typing on one kind of machine or another for since I was sixteen, and that was a LONG DAMN TIME AGO. I’m faster and think better when I’m on a keyboard.
I couldn’t write cursive for anything as long as a book. I enjoy writing letters, but have to regularly stop and shake my hand because of writer’s cramp. I have been typing for so long that I don’t usually have to look at the keyboard, although I have never learned to touch type.