I watch my daughter more than she realizes, especially now that she is leaving. I look at her letters and essays from school, and above all, the beauty of her handwriting is what strikes me. That hand  ballet-dancing across the page, each swirl, an artistry. Then you see the completed page and all it needs is a frame.

The notes that she leaves on the kitchen table are remarkable, even something so mundane as a shopping list.  And so the word “sponge”, for example, does not convey utility but rather itself, its own form, an abstract image.  Look at the “s” and what is it but a swan’s neck, with such sensuality, such grace…

And then there are dinner party guest lists, where the friend’s names are celebrated even before they are invited. Along with birthday cards and letters where feelings spill across the page and what have you got?  The profound poignancy of a handwritten letter. It’s the attention to each letter.  Such an old world concern.  And perhaps that’s why I examine it, why I let it enthrall me — because it draws you back, not to another decade but to another century, to some classical sensibility long forgotten when the form of the day wasn’t tied commercial enterprise, but to expression itself, for itself….

Hence the forgotten, and totally romantic experience, of receiving a letter that you can put on a shelf or on a wall or simply in a drawer, where it doesn’t disappear when your computer breaks down or when you push the delete button.

It’s the lost art I appreciate.