Essays, Art and Plays by Dan

I’ve been thinking lately about something that feels small on the surface but holds more meaning the longer I sit with it—handwriting. Not just the act of jotting something down, but the whole ritual of it. The weight of the pen, the slow curl of a letter forming on the page, the unmistakable presence of the person behind the words.

These days, it feels like handwriting is quietly vanishing, like an old friend we meant to call but somehow forgot. I imagine it living now in a kind of Script Sanctuary, sharing stories with faded fountain pens and half-filled notebooks. Cursive is there—once elegant and bold, now a little frail but still proud. Block print sits beside it, stoic and practical, watching a world that no longer seems to need them as much.

But I remember when handwriting was everything. I especially remember the joy I found in calligraphy—not just writing, but truly crafting each letter. There was something deeply meditative in the process: the rhythm of the strokes, the careful pressure of the nib, the way ink would sometimes surprise me with a flourish I hadn’t intended but chose to keep. It wasn’t about speed or efficiency—it was about presence. Attention. Beauty. In those quiet moments, pen in hand, I felt connected to centuries of scribes and poets who had once done the same.

Calligraphy was my way of honoring language—not just what words said, but how they appeared. Even now, I can picture some of the pieces I created, slowly drawing each loop and serif like they mattered—because they did. Writing that way, with intention and grace, taught me to slow down, to listen to the silence between words, to value detail in a way that typing never could.

Of course, I still type—don’t we all? Our devices are always within reach, and their convenience is hard to deny. But part of me misses what gets lost in translation. A typed sentence doesn’t reveal the mood of the moment. It doesn’t show the tremble in your hand or the extra pause you took before writing “I miss you.”

Still, handwriting hasn’t disappeared entirely. I see it in the occasional birthday card, in a note left on the kitchen counter, in the messy grocery list scratched in haste. I smile when I see calligraphy resurface in wedding invitations or handmade signs—as if these words are reminding us they still belong.

So maybe this letter is my way of encouraging us to keep handwriting alive in our own small ways. To write more. Not perfectly, but personally. Maybe even to pick up the calligraphy pen again—not because we have to, but because it reminds us of something beautiful, something tactile and true.

Let’s keep leaving traces of ourselves behind, not just in data, but in ink. Who knows—maybe those little gestures, those hand-formed words, will someday mean even more because they’ve become rare.