Chidren's Barnyard

It was a struggle to return to writing my blog again. I quickly realized that staring at the computer, eyes burning, wasn't helping me to return to writing. It hurt, because sitting and staring at a computer is what working is supposed to look like, and working is supposed to mean getting things done.

One morning, with burning eyes and nothing to say, I shut down my computer and followed myself on a walk. I walked out my door and down Central Avenue until I found myself on the UNM campus. I walked past the sculpture of Flamenco dancers, past fast food, skateboarders, and around the duck pond, until I landed at an old favorite studying spot, the West Wing of Zimmerman library. Surrounded by students studying Spanish verb conjugations and the ventricles of the heart, something unexpected happened.

I began to write by hand.

And that's what got me writing again.

It reminds me of this, that Lynda Barry painted with a brush, in her book "What It Is."

I have found that writing by hand is faster than a computer way of doing it, though I know it's not as easy. Tapping a finger is not as complicated as making an original line in the shape of an S. Handwriting is an image left by a living being in motion. Only by being a being in motion can you know about it. It's hard to do at first. It can make you feel crazy. Different parts of the brain are used when we make an S by hand and more of the body than a finger tap. Images seem to come from this kind of being in motion.

How strange to be young, to struggle to learn to make an S by hand, then later in life have to be reminded of the importance of making an S by hand. Robert Johnson wrote that Carl Jung said there are essentially two problems in therapy. The problem of the 21 year old and the problem of the 45 year old, regardless of the actual chronological age of the patient. The 21 year old's problem is how to get into life, while the 45 year old's problem is how to get back out of life.