To write a blog in your own handwriting and also, winning the lottery at the library

Ruth Ozeki is here with me, in this bougie-ass coffee shop that is playing Bon Iver (which I no longer approve of, but ultimately decide not to fault the barista for because maybe he is hung-over and needs quiet and soft this morning.)

She is here though, knitting together words which wrap me into some sort of time-less cacoon. And someone else, maybe one of the two gorgeous women on either side of me, wrap me in lavender. And I hope it's not perfume; I hope it's real, or real-er, or maybe just the essence of what their skin smells like. (Doubtful.)

So I am in a time-less, lavender smelling cacoon, awake only with the help of this coffee and needing to express a deep felt gratitude for what Ruth Ozeki articulated which I have always believed but never been able to voice in such a way:

Print is predictable and impersonal, conveying information in a mechanical transaction with the reader's eye.
         Handwriting, by contrast, resists the eye, reveals it's meaning slowly, and is as intimate as skin.

A Tale For The Time Being, Pg. 12, Ruth Ozeki

. . .

In my latest body of work, I chose to interview and discuss the concept of home with several university students from Lawrence. All of them had a different definition, a different context for home. The portraits I drew of them were not complete until they had added a poem of home on top, one that mingled with the visual representation of them to create a much more holistic representation of their identity, one I could never have created on my own or in TYPED form.

Here are a few examples of their hand-written poems, taken from their portraits included in the exhibit Where I'm From: Collected Stories of Home, © 2014,  Shea Love 

Just as there is no such thing as "I can't draw," there is no such thing as "my handwriting sucks." Handwriting is embedded in our cultural context, our identity, and the physical space and time we reside in. It is "as intimate as [our] skin."