Handwriting

Over the course of twelve years plus of childhood schooling, we were taught not just to write, but four different types of handwriting! Printing came in kindergarten and first grade. Then came cursive, then script, and last, we learned calligraphy. (My penmanship - described by some friends and family as 'chicken scratch' - was not my forte - not that I didn't care or try!)

In Medieval and early industrial times of western civilization, there were monks and scribes who copied scholastic, political, and religous works by hand for communications and archives. This was long before typewriters, computers, and copy machines existed. The Bible, the Magna Carta and The Declaration of Independence are three examples of Western works all originally recorded by hand. I'm especially intrigued by the lovely art of 'illumination' where the scribes use colored inks to ornament the first letter of a page, and sometimes the margins as well.

Because of our computer keyboards and other reasons, fewer schools spend much time any more teaching writing by hand. However, anyone whose computer has broken down for any length of time knows writing by hand is still a talent of worth! Even for someone like me, there is meditative pleasure to be found in the arts and laborious concentration of handwriting. And, receiving a letter with one's address and name in lovely script on the envelope is a true, not-so-mundane gift.

leaves

'How's the poem coming?' he asked.
 
'For lack of words, I'm drawing leaves,' she said. 'Lots and lots of leaves.' Gray ink flowed from her pen to the white surface of the back of an envelope. 'The life of a leaf is so poetic.'  She traced the curves of the edge of another leaf. 'Their love for each other is a poem.'

contradiction

She glanced up. 'He is most natural when he contradicts himself, when he is random as spring.'

'I'll have an apple,' he said as he picked up an orange.

Somewhere in the middle of the last century, pizza became a staple in American life. (This is on my mind because it is 4 AM, and I'm up and about, enjoying a slice of a cold, leftover Italian pie.) Our dad many times described the first time pizza came into his life. He was on a small ship in the Pacific during World War II in the 1940s, among men from many parts of the United States. One of the cooks on board was from the Northeast, of Italian heritage. As a treat sometimes, this cook would roll out a pie crust, spoon some canned tomato sauce on it with some grated canned cheese on top, and bake it in the oven. Voila, presto! Pizza! It was nothing like what the cook had at home, but to the guys on the ship, many who had never heard of pizza, it was an unscheduled treat.

I first had pizza in the mid-1960s. Unfamiliar with the taste of oregano, I ate little of the pie my folks brought home from Shaky's Pizza, an early franchise. As I grew older, and more familiar with the spices, I became a fan too. Ordering pizza from one of the many chains - Pizza Hut, Pizza Inn, Domino's, Mr. Gatti's, Little Caesar's, Marco's - has been integral to young adult life, in college or hanging out with coworkers. If you have no transportation, it can be delivered to your door. It's a way to survive in America without knowing yet much about cooking. Bread, cheese, tomato sauce. (Some versions leave out the sauce.) You can add meat and veggies - mine just now had black olives, mushrooms, and tomatoes - it's a whole food in the hand. Leftovers in the fridge (or on the counter), good at supper or breakfast, don't last very long.

Then there is the occasional pizza pie, with special crust and a selection of finer cheeses and fresh fillings, that makes your eyes tear up with joy.

Yesterday, I spent some time trying to look up the Divine Office or Daily Office. (I'm not even sure that's the right name for it; the information I found was inconsistant.) What I wanted to know about was the ancient practice of dividing the day with prayer breaks. I knew about it as a child, and a person a generation older than me knew that some Catholic orders in Lafayette, Louisiana (where I grew up) maintained the tradition.


Yesterday, I was curious about the names accorded each break in the day because I could only remember a couple - matins and vespers. I'm now also curious about how, in the centuries before clocks, they determined when to ring the bells for each division of the day. Was there some mechanical set of steps? Was one person assigned the role of timekeeper and he or she just intuitively divided the day, knew it was time for Terce? Was that role passed on in an apprenticed kind of way? And were the times of day in synch with the orders in other parts of town, or other parts of the world?


I'm also curious about the language of the names. I believe they are Latin, but I'm not sure all of them are Latin.


The names and order of the names and the number of divisions that I found yesterday again were not consistent. But here is a list that works both with what I found, and my weak memory. The list however may not be 100% accurate.

Lauds
Matins
Prime
Terce
Sext
None
Vespers
Compline
Vigils

The man in the broken rectangle ...

There is a man
he lives in a broken red rectangle
not so much is missing
a corner here
a small length there.

because it is broken
he cannot keep people out
they come and go
as do possums and squirrels
woodrats and flying bats.

better luck next time,
a stranger in a straw hat laughs.
Better luck this time,
says the man.
he shakes his fist
but the traveller is long past.

a black toad
with green around the eyes
and a touch around the mouth
hops out through an open corner.
She tells the man,
you are born naked
and no one owns the land
the air or water.

you are mistaken,
the man yells
and she hops away.
the man dies
and the worms and flies
the fungus and ants
they take care of his remains.
vines of flowers
entwine his rib bones
and fireflies and hummingbirds
soar back and forth
above the broken red rectangle
and moles and armadillos crawl beneath
until the broken rectangle is a work of art.
humans come from many hours away
to look, and to wonder at its beauty
how it came to be
what it all means.
the elephants
the apes
the panther
the buick
the laughing hyena
travel over the lines and beyond
and drink with the hippopotamus
and the egret on his back
who reside near the water's edge.

ode to my weary plants
 
your roots still tangled
in those flimsy plastic containers i found you in
brave and scraggly companions
traveling with a crazy woman
from this temporary place to that
like refugees
not easy for an unsettled poinsettia
a tiny rose
the day will come

your roots will take grip
in deep dark soil
amongst neighborly trees and grasses
and you will not topple
but reach noble and steady
toward the sun