Long-handed

The prompts answered above are:
1. Name
2. Blog address
3. Write: “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”
4. Favorite quote.
5. Favorite song (of the moment).
6. Favorite band/singer (of the moment).
7. Write anything you want.
8. Tag 3-5 bloggers.

I have always had romantic notions of handwriting. I like antiqued paper. I’ve tried to write with a feather (although not recently). I’ve played with calligraphy (again, not recently). And I love the idea of long, “meaty” letters, the kind that I imagine far-flung family members or friends wrote to each other before we had the Internet and satellites and phones. Imagine someone in Regency fashion at a small desk, lit by an almost-sunny window overlooking a cottage garden that gives way to rolling fields dotted with distant sheep, writing letters filled with gossip and commentary and descriptions of the weather.

(That’s a rather Jane Austen image, and I don’t normally think I’m all that into Austen. I don’t make a habit of regularly reading her books; in fact, I don’t think I’ve read any of them since college.)

I like to imagine receiving letters like these. But I’m really terrible at writing them. Busy, I guess. And it’s easy to assume that everyone I might write to is equally busy and wouldn’t be so thrilled to receive a half-dozen pages of assorted descriptions and random musings about the possible actions and motivations of other people they don’t know.

But if no one writes these letters, what will we save in our empty shoe boxes, bundled with ribbon and dried flowers? If there’s nothing to find, how will our great-grandchildren ever spend a rainy afternoon sneaking into the attic and finding a dusty box of faded letters and photographs?

There just isn’t quite the same magic in a box of old hard drives.

Are you a letter-writer? Or is it better if you are the only one who is regularly expected to read your handwriting?

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