In school we learned to write in cursive, and I still recall how we used to copy texts of dinosaurs. The Brontosaurus and Triceratops were teachers showing me how to script. To spill the words on paper, making sense in ink and think while taking notes.
When I went to university I added symbols to the text and numbers. I filled Filling notebooks pads and paper both with text and numbers, graphs and pictures. I got myself a fountain pen and scrawled with royal blue on white. I remember papers filled with calculations and equations filling up recycling bins.
Now, with fingers stretched across my keyboard, I realize how long it’s been since they have curled around a pen, how my notebooks never fills with letters. When will I ever write a letter or a poem with a pen?
letters in the snow —
the shadow from a birch tree
footprints of a fox
A page of notes from my University time
Kim hosts the haibun Monday and wants us to write about handwriting at dVerse. Not a lot to write about it any longer, I have ceased to write by hand.
—-
January 22, 2018
Björn Rudbergs writings 
How amazing, to see your handwriting from your university days, Bjorn. I lost all my university folders and books when
I prefer writing my first draft in pencil in a poetry notebook but resort more often now to my laptop…it’s quicker. But just not the same.
I like to write poems in pencil, too. I like the physical feel of it on the paper.
i don’t know what happened there – I apologise!
I lost all my university folders and books when I moved from Germany to Ireland and then to London. However, I still have an old notebook I used to keep with me with some very old poems in!
I love the title of your haibun, Bjorn, and enjoyed finding our how you learned to write – with dinosaur texts! We always had royal blue ink for fountain pens – now I only write with black, if I use a pen at all. That’s a delightfully wintry nature haiku!
That is a lovely haiku 🙂
I love that haiku. I remember those endless university notes! And then all thrown away…
Very neat writing with adequate spacing between the lines. I’ve never used a fountain pen, but I still carry a small pocket notebook with me even though my phone provides enough software and a stylus to write with it.
I used a fountain pen as well except I used violet or peacock blue ink to fill it. I haven’t written anything except to sign my name or leave a quick note on my door to my husband and he can’t read my writing so….The haiku is most excellent. We just used over and over repeated excercises to leanr cursive…not as interesting as dinosaurs!
Björn! Your handwriting is so neat😮. Perhaps this is a call for us all to get out our pens and notebooks! Love the letters and fox footprints in the snow. ….great image.
…and now our schools plan to disband teaching cursive writing. Will it soon be a thing of the past? Somehow keyboards lack the romance, to they not?
I love how the dinosaurs became your teachers of cursive writing – what a wonderful way to learn.
I was taught to write neat and tidy, for if not, we had to write out again until it was so.
Our haiku’s are similar. I too see freshly lain snow as a blank page, just waiting for nature to write on it.
Anna :o]
Handwriting will become as lost as ancient languages, such as Ojibway which I have had to help maintain in a native daycare. I suppose it is up to us to preserve it and pass it on. I love the natural formations of letters you bring into your haiku.
It is amazing how far we have already moved from cursive writing. AI makes us less skilled in reality!
The fox left his signature!
Dwight
loved your post and that is how i feel too…keep getting myself notebooks in the hope that they will inspire me to write more often, but still not to the point where i want.. and your photo of the notes – so neat 🙂
Ah, time flies. I’m especially loving that last stanza Bjorn!
I love your haiku! Sad that things fade or melt away ssometimes so slowly we forget they were ever there at all.
And what I love, is the idea of an atom “feeling for” having an extra electron! Crazy, it is!
I wonder, Bjørn, if science is making small. Art, on the other hand, makes great. One cannot enter artistry by the orientation of science, though. One cannot possess.
Of course a metal can have an affinity for electrons… that’s what makes them metal 🙂
Your notes were very neat! I never used a fountain pen. Now I do nearly all my writing on my computer.
I like your haiku!
“I got myself a fountain pen and scrawled with royal blue on white.” such a poetic line! I was transported back to old school days. I work with a senior physicist who still wants us doing calculation in long format, good practice for the soul to be patient and not just depend on algorithms. I imagine your need for speed makes using the computer much more practical as the thoughts flow. Such a perfect haiku, the shadow of the tree and leaves imprinting on the fox’s trail, brilliant!
Enjoyed this – and really related. I write poetry notes: pen on paper. But once I start moving images and impressions around, it’s time to hit that keyboard. I move lines and pieces of lines around so much, when I write poetry, I can’t imagine how poets did it, in days-of-old, without going mad.
Meant to mention that the haiku is stunning. Quite beautiful but, more than that, is has a lovely ethereal quality, so appropriate – mesmerizingly so – to the prose.
great imagery in that haiku.. fox words on shadow paper!
“showing me how to script. To spill the words on paper” … This is my favorite part.
Then this: “calculations and equations filling up recycling bins”
Beautiful sound when read aloud.
Oh, the title as well. It’s so suggestive of other things … Like, I cannot die; or I cannot make a fist. Immortality + a peaceful demeanor, in essence.
Science/math is a foreign language. It doesn’t matter how neat, how pretty it is written I am lost in the ink.
Your handwriting is so beautiful, Bjorn! 🙂 Love that haiku!❤
I like it, Bjorn. I hardly ever write except notes to myself and a TD list. Those could be electronic as well, but then they wouldn’t be obnoxious until finished, out of site sort of.
One thought, “why do we still call it ‘writing’?”
..
I’ve always loved your use of words, how any word visiting your writing garden understands that it will get the chance to be anything it wants–nouns can be verbs and adjectives verbs and verbs can do magic, if they wish… “to script” is such a great phrase.
Fountain pens were my favorite and still are! I have a really old fountain pen form the 1800’s that sucks the ink from a bottle with a plastic bladder inside. Such a wonderful pen yet it sits dry now as digital is the way. I have my father’s gold Cross pen (he passed) and wrote my poem with it but it doesn’t get used either.
Yes the technology has steered us in a different direction. Its good to go back now and again to pens and pencils grips
Thanks for dropping by my blog
much love…
What fabulous joy to still have those books. I remember the drawback though, if you made a big mistake you had to write it all out again, no simple easy cuts like today.
A wonderful exploration into the origins of your cursive dance with dinosaurs.
Love the haiku Bjjorn, and I can relate to the sentiment of your words. I think we all have grown used to typing things on the computer.