Self Censoring...

Jen, my wife, who issued a challenge to me the other day or week or other whenever it was ago, told me that she thought that I engaged too much in self-censoring. Her challenge was that I write for ten minutes a night--free write, stream of consciousness. Well, she's right. I do self-censor. It's difficult not to. In my writing group [ATTENTION VARINBIRD: I AM WRITING ABOUT THE WRITER'S GROUP!! ACHTUNG! ACHTUNG! DAS IST DIE SPRECHEN ABOUTENZEE WRITER'S GROUPENZIE!] How's that for phoney, stream-of-consciousness German writing!? Anyhow, in the writer's group, we talked about the editing self and how it often gets in the way of the writer. Sometimes the editing self paralyzes the writer, to the poin that the writer cannot even get the beyond the first sentence!! Seems obvious, but when you hear other people say it aloud, "yeah, I edit myself to the point of parlysis," you don't feel so bad about yourself.

Anyhow, the lovely Jen, who has her own blog, complete with photos and a link to flickr, suggested that she pull a word out of a hat and just give it to me to write about. She's actually stretching right now, doing yoga to triphop or morcheeba or some sort of chillaxable music, so I'm goint to reach over and spin the wonderful wheel of words and i'll come up with a word on my own. My word is cursive.

That's a weird word, eh? I actually just looked in the dictionary, opened it to a page, closed my eyes and pointed. That's what came up! Cursive.

Anyhow, I can remember my first foray into cursive writing. It was third grade. Maybe second. Somehwhere in there. Anyhow, I remember the teacher telling our class...it was Third Grade. Anyhow, Ms. Omatsu told our class, our combined 2nd/3rd grade class at Spring Valley Elementary School, in San Francisco, that all teachers from now on would want us to write in cursive, so we should learn to do it well. Above the chalk board was the cursive alphabet. All of the cursive letters had arrows showing which way the pen strokes should flow in order for our letters to turn out perfectly. Of course, the teacher's examples, on the chalkboard, were perfect. Oh, Ms. Omatsu. You had perfect cursive writing. If I were up in front of a class full of 2nd/3rd graders, I think that I would probably have perfect cursive writing as well. I went home and showed my mom my cursive writing. It was new, it was different, and, more than anything, writing cursive made me feel like an adult. This was the realm of adults, this cursive writing. This was what my grandparents did when they wrote in my birthday cards. This was what my teachers did when they wrote notes to my parents. This was what adults did when they wrote letters to eachother. This was the secret adult code, and I was going to be privvy to it now!

I remember one of my first experiences with the adult code. I read a note on fine stationery that my mom was writing to her sister. "Blow it out your ass," the note said. I was shocked. This was not the way that my mom spoke to her sister on the phone! So, this was what cursive writing was for. Cursive writing was for writing smarmy, insulting things as well as warm, pleasant greetings, like "Happy Birthday to our favorite grandson, Love, Mimi and Papa." Cursive was indeed an opening into another world!