Saturday, September 30, 2017

I Suck at Poetry: the Pomegranate Edition

Yesterday was National Poetry Day, and today was National Coffee Day. I was caught in a deadline deluge yesterday, so I could not produce any half-assed free verse within the span of the fake holiday. However, tonight, liquored up on that addictive substance known as the Starbuck's seasonal coffee (tonight's weapon of choice: the maple pecan latte), I scribbled out a few lines inspired by a memory of an afternoon in Armenia, a million years ago, eating a difficult fruit for the first time. 

I have no idea why this tiny memory came back to me. I was walking upstairs to my apartment, and, BOOM, I was on a side street in Yerevan a lifetime away from now. After I scribbled down a few lines, I thought about what the pomegranate means in Armenia — good fortune, fertility, hope. An old tradition in Western Armenia sees brides throwing and breaking a pomegranate, scattering the seeds to ensure the birth of healthy children.

Without meaning to, I think I wrote something about people other than myself and my friend eating sweet seeds for the first time. I think I wrote about people longing for something they do not have.

But hey, it's just broken lines of bad verse. It can mean anything you want.


Granat

It was cold in in Yerevan
that day when you bought
a pomegranate for us
to share.

You cut it open
with a pocket knife
splitting the dull rind
exposing the richness inside.

Purple-red beads
heavy with juice.

I plucked one out
and placed it on my tongue
crushing it against my teeth.

“Looks like caviar,” you said
turning an aril between
thumb and forefinger.

Sweet caviar.

Plump
and sweet
and glistening.

“It means good fortune here.
Fertility,” I said.

We sat on a swingset
in an empty playground
eating gems from a shell.

Fingers stained and wet
no napkins in my pocket
to sop the harvest blood.

I held my hands out before me
the color of garnets
drying in the breeze.

Sunday, August 06, 2017

August, Cherries, and the Pizza Man

August, despite the miserable heat it usually brings, is one of my favorite months in Washington. Reason? People are vacating, and the commuting is easy. Well, easier. Easy-ish. Also, the cicadas are in full voice, and my local grocery store has $1.99 specials on a pound of cherries.

I should make a sugar-free clafoutis while the cherries are plentiful, in honor of my friend Sam who shuffled off this mortal coil last year, dammit. I never met Sam, other than through the ether. We became acquainted via the forum on Thomas Dolby's website. Sam was a roadie and crew member for Blue Öyster Cult for years and years. He had great stories, a fantastic sense of humor, and he always beamed with so much love for his wife and daughters. One of his daughters is a Russia specialist, so we talked All Things Russian now and then.

Sam liked to cook, and we discovered we both had a love of the fab French peasant dessert (or, hell, breakfast!) clafoutis. Sam had mastered a sugar-free version, and I had sent him a message last year asking for his recipe. I got caught up in the regular flow of mental traffic that makes up life, and didn't notice that he hadn't responded for a while. Then I noticed he hadn't posted to Facebook for a while, and then I found out he was gone.

I felt like a crappy friend. I really did. How did I miss him leaving this life? Although "knowing" Sam from his warmth and wicked humor online, I doubt he would have minded. We all get busy, we all have our own circles of life and calamity and obligation. We all fall down holes that suck up our time and our thoughts, and we have to forgive ourselves. And we have to forgive others when they are consumed with the minutiae of their lives. Friends circle back. Good friends? The old chestnut is usually true: it's as if you're just picking up the same thread of conversation, just with some more strands to weave into the tapestry of your story.

Sam's probably tuning a guitar in Heaven for one of the many musicians we lost last year, too, so his dance card is full. And I'll have to find a good sugar-free clafoutis recipe on my own.

I'm not a very good cook. Wait  that's too kind. I'm an awful cook, unless it's avocado dip, hamburgers, or something that can be mixed easily in a pan or pot bachelor-style. My skills at baking are limited, too. I can make clafoutis, sour cream chocolate chip coffee cake, my mom's chocolate chip oatmeal cookies, and these amazing, impossible-to-screw-up lemon blueberry muffins from the New York Cookbook. (Buy the book - SO worth it! Get a used copy on Amazon for a buck!) I can watch cooking shows 'til I'm blue in the face, and it's not going to make me Gordon Ramsay. (Although I can swear like him, no problem.)

I have been known to make biscuit bricks, a rice pilaf that deserves its own level in Hell, and once, a brownie so sickeningly sweet, my guests were all on the verge of diabetic coma. Let's face it: it's not my forte, but I try. My current lack of balance and strength makes any cooking (or doing dishes or laundry or dusting) a real pain in the ass. So, my less than admirable kitchen skills are even less admirable these days. Freezer bags of "steamer" veggies get the nod, along with odd combinations off the shelf that don't require much imagination or time in Julia Child's sensible shoes.

Hopefully, someday, this will pass. Not the bad cooking — I think I'm a lifer in that camp — but the balance and strength. Fingers crossed it returns. I'm too young to be this old.

I heard a knock at my door as I was writing that last sentence. I answered with healthy trepidation, not expecting anyone. It was one of the Georgian pizza guys. There is a group of Georgian men (as in Tbilisi, not Atlanta) who deliver for a handful of pizza and sub joints in my area. When any of them delivered to the trio of bachelors across the hall, they'd knock on my door for a little chat in Russian and just check and see how I was doing. This started after one of them saw me hobbling on my two sticks one afternoon at a strip mall on the Pike, and the Great Georgian Pizza Team grew concerned.

The man who stopped today usually has twinkling eyes and a load of charming compliments. Not today. He looked tired and thin, and every one of his sixty-some-odd years. For once, I asked him if he was okay before he could do the same for me. "Tired," he told me. "Old." Then I remembered something 
— the bachelors moved out last week. He explained he had a delivery in the next building, and he wanted to see if I was okay. Then he said, "My wife died three weeks ago. Everything is empty now. The house, my life..." 

He told me how he and his wife had been friends for many years in Georgia before they finally married. "It took too long for me to realize. For her, too. We should be together. But we were happy. Finally."

"Hаконец-то. Hаконец-то...."

"Then... she got sick. Cancer. Other things. It was fast. Now... the house is just walls and a roof. I get up, I take a shower, I put on this shirt, I eat breakfast, I go to work... I am still here, but I am not here. You understand, yes?"

He reached out and took my hand. "Do you have love in your life?"

"No." I had no idea why I felt compelled to express such simple honesty to him. "I don't."

"I hope you find it. I hope you do. We found it so late. Too late. Not much time. I hope you find it."

And then, the pizza man cried.

"Go out into the sun. I know you are a good person, a kind and beautiful person. I hope you find some love. I wish you love like we had." I felt bad. This grieving man was sharing profoundly generous thoughts, and I looked like a greeting card hag with my unbrushed hair in a banana clip, dressed in leopard-print leggings, slippers, and a t-shirt with holes in it. I was awkwardly gracious, fumbling in Russian for the right words of sympathy and embarrassed gratitude.

Then the pizza man let go of my hand. He walked downstairs, his shoulders shaking as he cried. My heart broke for him. 

I honestly don't think I'm a particularly good person, a kind person, or, most certainly, a beautiful person. I am just a person. I am a deeply, profoundly flawed person, invisible —  or laughable — to most other humans. But, just like most other humans, I do want love. And forgiveness. And kindness. And sometimes to just be left the hell alone —  and every other damn thing we all want.

And time moves faster now. Harder to catch dreams on the wind and hold on to them.

Still, we try to hold on, even when the wind wants to knock us off our feet.

As for me? I still have to find my balance first.




Saturday, July 08, 2017

I Suck at Poetry: the Moscow 1989 Edition

I know.

The five people who still come here (prompted by Facebook or Twitter) are pretty sure I've forgotten how to put more than 140 characters together anymore.

Not true! However, most of the writing I do now is focused on the requesting and gathering of cash for a nonprofit, and the expression of gratitude for said cash. In my non-work hours, my life has been focused on the difficult tasks of falling down a lot, sleeping, and watching awful documentaries on Netflix when my insomnia kicks in. (Seriously  there's a "documentary" out there about Atlantis that features clips from Gerry Anderson puppet shows. Puppet shows, people. Puppet Poseidon is not real. Well, for that matter, "real" Poseidon isn't real. Oh — and while I'm ranting — there's another documentary about ancient Egypt that includes — nope, nope, saving that for another post.)

As usual, I digress.

The other day, I was chatting with someone about life in Moscow back in the day. Back in the day being the late 80s, early 90s, when it was my home. Pretty sure I wouldn't recognize much of the city now — nor could I afford it. Honestly, that's okay. I'm never going back. My time there is over. And goodness (she writes, her fingers dripping with sarcasm), if I want a little Russia now in our time of brazen, ugly engagement with the Kremlin, I can listen to the Russian "news" that now plays on local DC radio where bluegrass music used to live.

The bitterness and distaste I feel for official Russia today has led me to divest myself of some once-prized items that have been in my home for many years. My folk art and fairy tale lithographs of another age altogether will remain. Ivan Bilibin didn't hack the election, after all. Neither did the wonderful artists I met over the years. It makes me sad sometimes. I invested many years of my life in that part of the world, but now I joke darkly that at least I speak the language of our future overlords.

I wouldn't trade the time I had living in Moscow for most things, although my memories are plagued by 20/20 hindsight  the curse of mental time travelers, always hoping to change the path already taken. A quarter of a century after dragging my baggage — literal and figurative — through the terminal at Sheremetyevo, I'm done. A European acquaintance took me to the airport when I moved home to the 'States. At one point, I would have called him a friend, but that designation had died under the weight of his lies and the crushing number of times he took strange advantage of me and my dumb-as-a-box-of-rocks-itude.

Some years later, he reached out to me via email in the hopes of a green card marriage. The email came through late at night while I was in the business center of a hotel in Tbilisi, Georgia, trying to get messages back to my office in DC. It had been a wretched day from the start, and this email was the bird poop icing on the cake. As I coughed through the tire fire haze that filled the hotel (part of a days-long protest over Russian energy blockades), I laughed at the message.

"Dearest M,

My friends are opening a restaurant in NYC. They would like me to manage it for them. It would be so wonderful if you would consider a marriage with me. Wouldn't it be fun for us?" 

Jackass.

I howled. And coughed.

And I answered:

"Are you fucking joking? I'm in a tire fire in Tbilisi. No."

I have to wonder if he thought "a tire fire in Tbilisi" was some sort of Americanism for "bad shit" that he didn't understand. Truth is, I didn't care (although I like the thought of him in Paris saying to people, "Mon ami, zis day has been like ze tire fire in Tbilisi.")

I never heard from him again, and, like leaving Moscow behind, I'm really, really good with that.

If I ever get hitched (about as likely now as flying pigs falling from the sky like Egyptian plague frogs), it will be to a relatively sane straight man. My track record for sane, straight, available men has been miserable. Can it be tracked in negative figures? In Moscow, it was just as bad as at home. Worse, possibly. Probably.

There was someone on whom I had a little crush my first few months in Moscow. He was erudite, funny, smarter than me by a mile, a Midwesterner (bonus points!) and a good ten years older than me. And my awkwardly crushy swoon was not returned. At all. I'm pretty sure I could have been a talking dog for all he cared. (I'm still waiting for my naiveté merit badge, you know.) Still, I liked him. Go figure.
Clue phone! Ring ring!

I took a car trip with him once from Moscow to Leningrad to meet up with his parents. We could not travel solo, so he needed another warm body in his car. He had to file travel plans with The Authorities for a road trip, which meant the police in every podunk town we passed through knew we were coming and wanted to check out his car. This made for a long trip, but the cops were thrilled to look under the hood at an Audi engine.

When we reached Leningrad, his parents hated me from the moment they set eyes on my schlubby self. I mean they HATED me. Screaming purple passion hate. It was almost funny how palpable their dislike for me was. It oozed from them like some liquid cancer anytime I walked into a room, and my mere appearance had enough gravity to pull Mom's mouth down into a disdainful frown.

I did see relief on their faces once that weekend, when it was explained to them that I was only a requisite traveling companion and coworker — not a girlfriend.

Whew, Mom and Dad. Whew.  Bullet. Dodged.




Don't worry, Mom and Dad, I'm just his coworker. 
I'll just take my glowing skull and be off, then!


These were uptight humans, plain and simple, and God knows, I fully admit to being an acquired taste. I'm weird, I'm fat. It was 1989, so I still owned stirrup pants, for the sake of all that's holy!

I tried my best to be invisible during our three days of shared captivity, nodding to the trio at breakfast in our swanky hotel, taking my kasha and tea at a separate table, and then setting out on my own (except when they wanted a spare interpreter), walking the avenues and side streets of Leningrad as a solo act. The ride from Leningrad back to Moscow was quiet on my part, even when the parents tried to pry information from me about my family. The initial "Ahhh, I see. You're a Catholic..." from Disapproving Dad was enough for me. Still, it was a free trip to Leningrad and back. I had a Walkman (A WALKMAN, PEOPLE!!) with fresh batteries, and I just watched the countryside roll by with ABBA in my ears.

Find the good in  everything, right?

After that trip, our friendship — if it ever was that — failed. I was ashamed that I had been judged in a split second by people — people of God yet, big, big G, ministers of God people — and that my assumed friend didn't have my back. (I can hear Cary Elwes in The Princess Bride saying, "Get used to disappointment." I should get that on a t-shirt.)

It was awkward and sad for a while, and I missed lunches with the one-time crush, discussing the ridiculous, hilarious, and sometimes wonderful aspects of life in Russia, switching with ease between English and Russian as we talked. Eventually, I got a new job in a different building. The potential for hallway hellos all but vanished, and when he left Moscow, I didn't even know he was gone for weeks.

Life goes on, right?

Still, memories are like tattoos on our brains. Good or bad, some last forever, while others fade in time. Here's a little brain tattoo from 1989. And remember, I really do suck at poetry.


Moscow 1989

Remember
When the ruble crashed?

We lived like kings
For a week
Or two

Gold and gems
And books 
And clocks 

And thick amber slices
Hiding insects caught
In honeyed time.

Breathless millionaires!

I snatched

Plane tickets
Samovars and china sets
Antique carpets
By the yard

(Then gave most of it away)

But the truth is
Friend
What I enjoyed
The most that year
Was simply

Lunch with you
In the dusty garden
Out behind
The filing room
At work

Reindeer
Smoked and dried and sliced
Wrapped up
With market herbs
So fragrant and so fresh
All crushed

Hunks of cheese
Sticky with jam
And lick-your-fingers honey
Melting on
Steaming wheels of
Hot lavash

We washed it down
With cheapest 
Georgian red
In cracked plastic cups
Bleeding on cement

While we talked
While we laughed
While we watched the city

Cost a kopek

Always priceless. 




Thursday, June 23, 2016

Red Line Prompt

This evening I asked my friend, the artist formerly known as the Sasquatch (and now known as Model Citizen Press), for a writing prompt. I have so many stalled stories piled up at home, it can be overwhelming, so I figured something fresh would be good. Mr. Model Citizen Press pondered and gave me the following words: sandals, manhole, and shopping bag (plastic or paper). I decided to do this as a roughly 45-minute writing sprint (in the spirit of Jane Espenson's Twitter-announced anyone-can-join sprints), and this is what I put together.

Be kind. Fiction is not my gift.

For my friends in DC: don't be offended. We've all had these days. Especially when it's 95 degrees outside and you're stuck on a train with the entire population of the world and all you want is to be a million miles away.

(Oh, and if you don't like profanity, fair warning!)

-------------------------------------------------------

Red Line

Jen hated Metro. She hated Metro with every fiber of her being. She hated the delays. She hated the overcrowded trains, the single-tracking, the fires, the smoke, the assholes who ate whole meals on board and left the remnants on their seats, the guys who manspread, and the women who take up an extra seat for their precious shopping bags. She hated peak fares and broken escalators and the Red Line in particular.

Today Jen's Metro rage was fueled by the girl behind her who had propped her feet up on the top of Jen's seat, trapping her hair under a dirty-sandaled foot. She counted to ten, and then counted to ten again. She put her hand behind her head to try to free her hair, but she couldn't get the foot to budge. Jen knew the girl had headphones on since she could hear Taylor Swift dumping another boyfriend and throwing popstar shade at muffled high volume.

"Fuck you, Taylor," Jen muttered. "Fuck you and your whole squad."

The girl got off at Tenleytown. Jen pulled her hair into a scrunchie and sighed. The train disgorged a flow of commuters and students, and a new horde teemed inside. A nearly tangible wave of humidity and B.O. poured on board with them. Jesus. Not even 8:30 and some sorry bastard already smells like a corpse in Hell. That'll be a fun workday.

She scanned the crowd, observing women in summer dresses, men in rolled shirtsleeves, and other men in suits. Who could wear a suit on a day like today? 95 degrees outside. No mercy. The smelly dude has to be one of the suit guys. 

Between each station, the train would stop in the tunnel, lights flickering. Jen closed her eyes and heard the rapid rush of a northbound train, dank air whooshing in through cracks in the doors and windows. No one spoke. Everyone just waited in the dark, each in their own thoughts, their own Metro rage, their own to-do list:

Number One: get the fuck off this train.
Number Two: get the fuck off this train.

Farragut North was just a couple of stops ahead. Jen just needed to hang on to there and then it was a short walk to work. Past the coffee shop, past the CVS, past the alcove that always stank of urine, past the same homeless man who always said "Good morning, beautiful!" to every woman who passed by. Past the hotel where visiting politicians bedded expensive whores, up the block by the Indian carryout and over to her office. By then, the Metro rage would be gone, to be replaced by a quiet work rage as she tapped at a keyboard all day, making small talk with people she barely knew.

I hate my life.

She wanted to be an artist. She wanted to make art, be creative, and still be able to afford groceries.  She was hot, she was sweaty, she was miserable, and she wanted to leave the city. She wanted out now. Gone, gone, gonzo, gone. Out of here, making art. Right fucking now.

In that moment, in the unmoving dark, in a hot tunnel north of Dupont Circle, Jen had an epiphany: today would be her last day at the officeher last day on Metro, her last day in the city. Screw you, DC. She had enough cash in her account to get out of town. She didn't have much stuff to pack. No plants, no pets, no boyfriend. Why the hell not?

The train started up, jarring everyone on board. As it pulled into Dupont, the lights flashed. "This train is out of service." A chorus of swearing, muttering misery filled the car and everyone filed out, resigned to another Metro issue. Jen pulled her messenger bag across her shoulder and exited with the rest of the throng. For once, she didn't care. She was leaving. She was done.

Jen pushed through the packed platform to the escalator. She'd walk to her last day. What's ten minutes late matter if you're quitting on the spot?

She blinked in the sunlight as she climbed to the surface. A middle-aged man played "Tears in Heaven" on a guitar at the top of the escalator. Jen filled her lungs with city air. Last day, breathe it in. The air was a little... acrid.

She stepped into the crosswalk, headed toward Mass Ave, and the ground erupted beneath her feet. Jen flew 20 feet, 30 feet above the city. "Ass over teakettle," her mom would have said. Flames rose up behind her like rocket fuel in her wake.

She never saw the manhole cover below her, propelling her skyward. Oh, fucking DC. Jen thought her last thought.

"Goddamn exploding manholes." The forensic tech lifted a corner of the white sheet and frowned at the broken form underneath. "When the fuck are they gonna get this shit fixed, huh?" The cop next to him shrugged and looked down into Jen's lifeless eyes, frozen in her moment of surprise.

"Jesus, what a mess."

"Yep," the tech nodded his head pulling the sheet back over Jen's face. "Like goddamn abstract art. Goddamn masterpiece."

"Fuckin' DC."
-----------------------------------------------------------

FYI: exploding manholes is an actual thing in DC. For realz.


Monday, April 11, 2016

Shadow of a Bird

This morning, there was a minute in my normal commute when my heart froze in my chest and my mouth went dry. 

I was on Canal Road, stopped in traffic, smiling at the wild lilacs that have started to dot the hillsides lining the road winding along the C&O towpath. The bright blue sky suddenly darkened with a form outstretched across the lanes of traffic. Wings. There were great wings above me. I remember thinking initially it was a trick of the light and just a huge turkey vulture circling carrion along the road. Deer, a fox, a raccoon... Canal Road isn't a friend to distracted wildlife. 

The shadow grew, and as it passed in front of me, I realized it was the shape of a plane far too low above the rush hour world. I could see the shape of the plane shadowed on the pavement and the roofs of the other cars. I saw the woman in the car next to me look up at the jet, too, her jaw dropped open. The path the jet took was unfamiliar. I watched the wings dip and rise, and I held my breath as I waited for it to make the turn along the Potomac to begin approach for Reagan National. I'm sure it was only a matter of seconds, but it felt like forever as the plane continued on a route that made me grip the steering wheel harder than I had in a very long time. Finally, it vanished from my view behind the office buildings of Rosslyn. I rolled down my windows and turned off the radio. There was a stiff breeze that hit my face. Still unmoving in traffic, I waited. I didn't try to catch the scent of lilac on the air. I just waited. 

And nothing happened. Not a damn thing.

A plane, probably buffeted by high winds far above my head, made a very awkward, low approach (way too damn low) to an airport. Happens every day. Maybe it was a young pilot. Maybe it was just the wind. Maybe both. Probably a hell of a lot of silent passengers up there, white-knuckling the approach right along with the crew. Probably a lot of relieved humans when the landing gear touched the tarmac by the river.

Down below, some commuters in little metal boxes on a congested strip of concretecommuters who remembered the days after 9/11had a momentary flashback to the days of chaos, the days of seeing smoke rise from the Pentagon, the days of fear and sadness.

And then we breathed. In. Out. In. Out. The light changed, and we flowed into lower Georgetown and to our destinations across the District. Just another day. Nothing to see here. Move along. It bothers me that such a simple thing can shatter your concentration and put you in state of alarm and worry so damn quickly. Humans are resilient... generally tougher than we give ourselves credit for. But our memories are long, and just as the scent of the wild lilacs on Canal Road can return me to childhood, the shadow of a metal bird can carry me back to things remembered with no happiness. I thought about it through my morning meetings.

Resilience. Joy. Sadness. Fear. Love. Loss. Hope. All the little pieces that make up the experience of a human soul. How quickly we move between those. Moment to moment, day to day.

Tomorrow, I will focus on hope. Hell, maybe I'll even take a different route to work. Today ushered in a time of change for me at work, and the promise of new and good experiences lies ahead. Over the weekend, a very dear friend told me to let go of some difficult and frustrating elements of my past. "Don't let people who've harmed you continue to rent space in your head," he said to me. Damn good advice. I need to take it. Hopeful day, no shadows, here I come!


Friday, April 01, 2016

I Suck at Poetry: the Cherry Blossom Edition


It's National Poetry Month, and readers of my blog know that I suck at poetry. That said, I will continue to produce sucky poems because I enjoy it. :) For the first day of this month, I offer some words about our local Japanese sakura superstars in all their fleeting glory.

The cherry blossoms were at peak bloom this past weekend here in DC. In my neighborhood, north of the city, the trees are on a delayed timer, only now kicking into full gear. On my way home from work, I sometimes take side streets to see trees off the beaten path. I came across one block recently 
that was loaded with my favorite variety of cherry tree: weeping cherry. SO cool. I grew up in a house with an enormous weeping willow out back, and seeing tiny cherry blossoms dot long graceful whips of branches is like seeing my childhood back yard dressed up for prom.

I was thinking of that earlier this week when I was stuck in some motorcade/police action/tourist traffic jam on 16th Street. I was outside the swanky St. Regis Hotel, singing along with the Hamilton cast album (don't get me started, it's a wonderful addiction, a musical sickness) when the wind started to whip up. The hotel (and the AFL-CIO building on the next block) has weeping cherries in full bloom lined up along the crescent drive outside the lobby. In the wind, the arched tree branches danced and they started to remind me of girls in wide skirts at Seven Oaks in "Gone with the Wind," waiting for their beaus to escort them out on the floor for a twirl. It made me wish I was skilled in animation. I could have filled a ballroom with sweet-petaled dancers.

The St. Regis Springtime Ball

The weeping cherry sisters
Sway and twirl
Outside the grand St. Regis

Good southern girls
In gowns of pink
And softest, purest white

Our hoop skirt debutantes
Bloom and swish at the
Wind Gust Cotillion.

Now watch them curtsy
See them blush
At every tourist walking by.




Monday, March 28, 2016

In Your Hand



My parents learned to write in the 1920s. Their handwriting bore the distinctive characteristics of those educated in the Palmer Methodprecise, graceful, and easy to read. My mother's handwriting was always better than my fathers. Her lines and loops swooped in a lyrical manner, while my father's was harder edged, with tiny spikes from a tremor in his hand that reminded me of a seismograph charting little earthquakes. His hand shook more as he aged, as had his mother's before him. I can still picture him spilling a cup of coffee like a sprinkler head as he brought it to his lips. I have the same tremor developing in my right handanother legacy I didn't need, like my wide nose, high blood pressure, astigmatism, or my ridiculously thick Irish peasant legs.

For now, my handwriting has not been afflicted, although I know it's only a matter of time. I have a measure of vanity about my writing, which I think is fairly graceful when I'm not in a hurry. (My Cyrillic penmanship is pretty darn nicenicer than my English script, honestly. Just not much call for it these days.) For now, I'm grateful to retain what I have. And, while I have the flaws of my father's side of the family, I echo my mom's side, too. As I agemuch like catching a glimpse of my mother's face as I pass by a mirrormy script looks more and more like mom's handwriting.


Pусский язык самый богатый в мире!

All of my siblings have beautiful cursive and equally cool printing. My late brother Ed had that same spiky cursive that marked our father's writing. I can't remember if he had our father's "architect style" printing, too. It always looked like he was marking blueprints with each letter. I don't think any of us inherited that style. My sister Elizabeth is an artist by nature, and her writing style radiates a very unique creative vibe. I was always envious of that. Her script is half cursive, half print, and unmistakably her own. I am envious.

Back in the dark ages of technology, I was fascinated by the "make your own font in your own handwriting" offers you found in in-flight magazines. Wow! Your handwriting appears on your computer screen! Of course, back then, it was an expensive novelty for executives, and it cost about a hundred bucks. A pipe dream for youngsters with shallow pockets. Now, you can get your font for five bucks (or, hell, for free) in a couple of minutes. Print out a template, draw your letters and numbers, scan them in, and boom - five minutes later, you have your own chicken scratch alphabet to use in Word. It's true. I've done it. I wasn't satisfied with that I created because I couldn't manage the right level of consistency in what I inked into each block. That said, when I use that font, I know it's me.

That's one of the things I love about handwritten letters. I know which one of my friends or family has sent me card or letter just by seeing a few letters on the address. The angles, the curves... how they formed my name or theirs... Who uses cursive? Who prints? Is it in big, bold letters? Is it in the slanted lines of a southpaw? Is it elegant, rounded, and utterly European?

I love that, even though we may have learned with the same techniquein some cases, in the same classroomour letters flow from our hands in forms as unique as the fingerprints on our pens. It is you. Simply you.

And you sent yourself to me.

I feel increasingly like every postcard, every letter, every greeting card written in someone's own hand is an expression of love and appreciation. It may be the lasting love of friendship, the family update, a platonic dialogue that lasts a lifetime, the words of passion between far-flung lovers... it's all pretty damn cool. It's also a piece of art you chose to make and give away. It's not a throwaway text typed carelessly into your phone and autocorrected into nonsense or condensed into 140 characters of abrupt one-liners.

A handwritten missive requires time and attention. Each stroke, each dot, each line, each misspelling you try to cover up with a smudge of ink carries some of youyour creative DNAto the recipient.

A few months ago, I found a massive stockpile of postcardsmany from the 1980sin a box in my closet. At one point, I'd decorated a whole wall in my first Moscow apartment with them, blu-tacked in untidy rows from floor to ceiling. Now, they needed new homes. With the postcards, I found a heap of old, unused postage stamps in various denominations. I had to look them all up on the USPS website, year by year, to see how many I needed to mail a postcard now.

I reached out to friends on Facebook and just asked who would like a postcard, complete with genuine handwritten message. I wasn't sure if anyone would take me up on the offer, but, in the end, I sent out nearly 100 postcards, each with a personalized message in my own scrawl. After a couple of weeks, I started getting postcards in returnsome in familiar hands I'd known for 20, 30, 40 years, while others were new to me. These new "voices" were friends I'd only ever known online, their words typed on screens in the same bland fonts we all use online. It was a revelation to see a lovely piece of these individuals that was hidden in the noise of social media. It was, in a way, like meeting them face-to-face. In delicate letters, bold prints, and even in the goofy script that made me squint, there was a warm, intimate moment that was sweet, kind, graceful, and exciting. Each postcard was a gift. And I was grateful.



It makes me sad to know that some kids don't learn cursive at all anymore. Who needs it? Ugh. Yeah, I've heard the argument. Just time wasted on a dead skill. I hear Obi-Wan Kenobi in my head referring to a lightsaber as "an elegant weapon for a more civilized age," and I think of a pen in that same way. A weapon for the sharpest words, an arrow to the heart of the sweetest love... who will read the letters of an earlier age if no one can read the text? Are we in such a hurry that we cannot stop to express thoughts with our unique marks on the page? Truth is, I don't care if someone uses the finest calligraphy, a scrawl, or block letters, if they send something handwritten. Share yourself. You have no idea how much impact a card or letter can have on someone going through tough times.

You are loved. You are remembered. You are not just a birthday reminder on a Facebook calendar. You mean something to me, and I wanted you to have something more than a catalog and an insurance ad in your mailbox.



Old news: life is uncertain. None of us has any idea when the smile or word we share with someone we love is the last one. I'm not trying to be morbid, but there have been momentsmoments that increase as the clock hands spin the dial and I flip pages on my wall calendarwhen I've wished I had one more time for all sorts of things. A call with my mother. A trip with my sister. A discussion about pop culture with my brother. All gone now. But I still have cards and letters they wrote. I can feel them through impressions made in ball point ink on paper. I can hear them through those curves and angles. I know who they are, and they are not forgotten. Voices in blue and black on white and beige. All precious to me now.

I know we're all busy. I know carving out time to sit quietly and write a few words can seem like the bottom of the priority barrel. But we can all do it. Get some paper, grab some cards (I highly recommend handmade letterpress cards from Model Citizen Press and I admit to being 100% happily biased on that count), dig out the old postcards you never sent on vacation. Go to the library, sit outside on a sunny day, or hit your local Starbucks and get yourself a coffee. Pull out a pen, and write a few lines. Hand cramps from lack of use? Write one a day, or one a week, or a couple each month. You are a storyteller. We all are storytellers. Surprise someone. Tell someone something funny, something mysterious, just something about your day, or what they mean to you. Write your life. Indelible, uncommon, rare... because it's you, and there is no other you out there. Leave a little bit of your heart in a mailbox. Leave a little bit of your soul with a friend. I swear, you'll feel a rush when you let it out in the wild with a letter carrier. Just don't forget the stamp.