Art of Handwriting

My relationship to handwriting has transformed and grown alongside me.

One of my earliest memories of handwriting was when I was in first grade. My teacher asked everyone to hold the infamous Ticonderoga #2 pencil, and she walked around the room checking how we each held our pencil. For every student that was holding a pencil incorrectly, she gave them a pencil grip object. As she neared my desk, my heart was beating quickly in fear, and next thing I knew, she dropped a grip on my desk. My face burned red with shame. I also saw the look of embarrassment in the faces of others who were told that they were holding the pencil wrong. Reflecting now, I understand that the pencil grip was supposed to aid in helping us write smoother and easier, but to this day, everyone holds their pencil differently. Why are we trying to force everyone to conform to a certain way of writing? Shortly after that incident, I tried writing using the “proper” technique, but it felt foreign and distant and outright uncomfortable. I’m thinking about the connection between conforming and norms and how harmful it can be because it insinuates a flaw where there isn’t one. Rather, I find there’s a sort of art in the way everyone holds their pencil, how it affects the shapes and curves of their letters.

It wasn’t only at school where I felt the shame and fear towards handwriting. In second grade, my grandmother, Wai-po, lived with us in our cul-de-sac in Sierra Madre, California. Many of my associations with house are lonely memories—I can still feel the coldness of the grey stone floors and the scratched, wooden table where my brother and I did our homework. Wai-po would make us practice our handwriting every day; she had us write out lines, and I remember the guilt that I felt when she praised my neat penmanship and scolded my brother for his messier handwriting. I saw the pain on my brother’s face as she yelled and yelled at him to start again, to keep writing, to remain at the table until his handwriting improved. I wanted to do something, but I was afraid of her hand. I can’t remember if I ever hand wrote anything that wasn’t for a school assignment during my earlier years. I didn’t want to write any more than I needed to; handwriting became some sort of competition between me and my brother, and I didn’t want that. Today, I admire my brother’s penmanship; the curves and artful messiness of his letters match his beautiful pencil sketches of Anime-like characters.

When I got to middle school, I attempted to write in journals or back then, my diary. My entries started with “Dear Diary…,” and I proceeded to write about my secret crushes—how they looked, if they looked at me, and what they said—and all the drama happening around me. But I didn’t religiously keep it up, and after a few days, I abandoned it, only picking it up from time to time. My handwriting was kind of messy, but I didn’t care because it was mine, and only I would ever read it, except when my sister secretly came to my room to read it. It wasn’t until I got to high school that I started to keep journals where I would write down my thoughts and accounts of my days. I was preserving history; I was freezing a moment when I wrote words down. When I started writing poetry during high school and college, I filled my journals with snippets of potential poem ideas and lines that interrupted my mind during the day. I tend to write down initial ideas for poems before I type them out on the digital, paper-like Notes App on my phone or laptop. Writing poems down creates the first shape of the poem.

When I moved away from home to Skidmore College, I started handwriting friend letters to my best friends in different states to shorten the distance between us. Writing letters feels more intimate and personal, and it’s easier for me to convey my thoughts and feelings through words on a page. Much like Lara Jean in To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, I also wrote in pen, employing a blend of cursive and print, love letters with poems embedded in them when I was in romantic relationships. Writing and giving love letters are one of my love languages because I’m sharing my feelings and my small, original handwriting, much like fingerprints—the differences are in the curves and lines.

Ode to Handwritten Letters

 

My eyes marvel at the words written on you,

captivated by their lovely décor:

fancy parchment paper, scraps of lined paper, post-it notes, and white napkins.

 

Style suits you:

words in black and blue ink—italicized, cursive, print, CAPITALIZED, lowercase.

 

All letters begin with

Dear,

 

You carry love, language

seeped in a warm cup of chamomile tea,

words breathing-in each other’s air.

Yours forever,

(Lovers)

 

You float on a dove bearing news

without the formality of newspapers,

utterly endearing.

Don’t forget to call and love you loads,

(Close family)

 

You rise even when stained

with the mud

of heartaches,

vines of poison ivy,

words that look harmless at first,

contaminated at once.

I’m not sorry I stomped on your heart,

(Quick to-be strangers)

 

You hold dripping gossip

thick with a sickening passion.

He thinks we don’t know about his string of affairs,

(Nosy friends)

 

Letters ending with

Love,

 

You carry the thoughts of others,

yet you do not

sink under their weight.

You fit perfectly in my hands.

 

 

The featured image comprises of one the left, an art journal of pink and orange peonies and roses painted in watercolor, and on the right, my light blue journal opened to two pages filled with a rough draft of a poem.