What I learn when I learn
This is specifically in reference to handwriting like it's 1895 where I am learning a more formal Victorian script. But it applies to any kind of learning.
Lesson the first: I can be - am often - a lazy bastard. Lazy is also a fun word to write in fancy cursive.
It is often easier to learn something completely new than unlearn or adjust something you already know. Zs are so different - I've never completely messed one up. Poor form, sure. Whereas Bs are almost the same except they attach the other way and every so often I do it wrong - as in, the way we all do.
One cannot undo forty years of conditioning in a fortnight and it would be mad to expect that. And yet, what do I expect? That.
My sister joked was I going to write like this permanently. Hell no, it's gruelling. But it's happening, of course it's happening. My actual handwriting is changing. Part of that is just that I've physically handwritten more in the last two weeks than probably the last six years. The sweeping cursive style is creeping in.
Last week I was in a Victorian pump house. I imagine pump houses were very unpleasant places to be. Noisy and smelly at least. Industrial. But it was beautiful. I give Victorians a lot of shit but I appreciate their commitment to making practical things ornamental just because they could. Extraordinarily exploitative labour, I guess. Or handwriting - just churn out generations of kids with identical standardised handwriting, under threat of the cane.
Once again I am reminded how, truly, my motor control is for shit. I've always been aware that other people are much better at this than me but other people don't seem to be aware I'm much worse than them. It's like when we play pool - which I cannot - and they explain angles to me, like this will help. I understand the physics! What I don't understand is how it's possible to negotiate eyes, two separate arms, a stick and a ball to hit another ball in any organised way that isn't sheer luck. I'm counting it a win if I hit it at all!
A big struggle I'm having is just with the shape of the letters. There's probably a technical term for this. The elliptical? The slant line? It's something to do with the angle of the writing. I call it the 'push'. In modern English handwriting the 'push' is left to right along the horizontal. This makes the shapes open - my Os are basically circles, as are my As and Es and similar shapes.
This is not the Vere Foster style. Everything is very vertical. I've found some success concentrating on the 'push' being from the bottom to the top, to make my shapes more oval and give it all more height. This script is a whole-arm effort. My shoulder and forearm are feeling it. As well as my wrist and fingers. I seem to have lost the ability to move my entire arm to write longer words.
I've got an exercise book now and am working on capitals from book three in the series. I spend a page writing 'the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog', then a page practicing words from the copy books, then a page writing a song lyric I'm listening to. Then sometimes a fourth page working on all the mistakes I made in the previous three.
The first time I wrote 'congratulations' in my copy book I had a full body visceral reaction because it looked exactly like so many cards I got from my grandparents. I wonder what they would think about me doing this. Bemusement, I expect.
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