Special Speech

It can sometimes appear as though hand writing is dying out, it’s one that is still today primary in numerous areas of life. A handwritten missive communicates more gravitas than a typewritten letter, such as an apology, an invitation, or an application for a job.

One might believe it’s a recent trend of the masses eschewing hand writing and using a computer instead, yet as far back as the late 1800s, there were cries that hand writing was being overlooked because of the typewriter. Nowadays, the rap is being attached to the ubiquitous utilization of computer keyboards.

All the same, there still exists a strong requirement for handwriting skills in in all walks of life. Hand-written missives are considered as to a greater extent more trustworthy, they demonstrate the author has studied over her words, and they demonstrate more respectfulness to the reader. In this age of “canned responses”, the hand-written missive has never been more influential.

I have a confession to make. I have oftentimes been caught out with my bad hand writing - made even worse by years of relying on the keyboard. In situations in which I’ve had to put pen to paper, my words have been a sloping scrawl. That’s just not professional. How to work out such an issue? I wrote more often, and my handwriting greatly improved. In conclusion, it’s advisable to improve your hand-writing by practise.

Another point is to find a pen you are comfortable with, with refills. Recommended refills include the renowned mont blanc refills. This permits you to better your hand-writing with a single pen.

To get married or not to wed? That is the inquiry. It never was the inquiry. It had been ‘When to marry?’ not ‘why to marry’. For ages women were required and expected themselves to seek out a spouse young, get married and set up home with tiddlers and a pet, and committhe rest of their lives to operating a good household. Perhaps because ladies have been loosed from what were once their traditional functions, that wedlock is no longer high on the agenda and most assuredly not the only road to go along. In Actually umpteen people- both men and women- decidedly detest the idea of marriage, and can’t envisage looking into a partner’s face and promising entirely to spend the remaider of their lives with them until someone dies. In many ways it’s a pity, because weddings can be such joyous occassions especially when they feature a pretty wedding dress and sky lanterns. But, calamitous marriages can be destructive, financially and emotionally ruinous, and the most lonely things of all. Though being in a ill-starred relationship is also massively isolating, somehow with the marriage mark, it’s even worse. Friends and family expect more of a couple when they are officially married and have also spent so much money on their wedding day. They are supposed to be happy or to at least try their damndest to be so. As a result of this detected external insistency, many men and women feel they have to put on a show and blot out their real emotions. The reason why there used to be a greater number marriages or why marriages endured a few generations ago is because couples had no choice but to keep pushing on with their relationship. This is advantageous in some ways, but in others, it is very wasteful. Yes there were a greater percentage of matrimonies, but there were also many more desperately pitiful ones.

There is something that bothers my neighbor
That irritates her, makes her skin: jump, crewel
That creates a humming stammer in her voice
And even makes gaps, silent ones as she talks
To my wife, about the heap across the street.
Her kind of row is another thing indeed
Where she doesn’t let one idea, spin
Not even one iota of that fall
Lest she lose her focus once and for all.
We are talking about last week’s branches,
And what’s hiding under that heap I see.
To please my neighbor, the branches I mean,
I’d have to get rid of the pile of rubbish
The one, everyone tosses garbage underneath
That lays so crude across the street, in the park.
But if one looks around we find much more:
My wife let my neighbor know this, that day
By day, her dogs piss and shit on our lawn,
Even on the light pole, and into the heap
The one she keeps talking about: an eye on.
She watches them all right, when you are looking.
To each this burden now has fallen, the branches:
We have to use nice words to keep the balance:
“The neighbor up the block has a junk car,” my
Wife complains to her, she has no more to say.
Oh, just another kind of neighborly game,
One to each his own, it adds up to little more:
She is all heap and we are all branches.
She will never understand my branches,
Nor I, her focus on the heapthat
We alone are responsible for its parting.
If I could put an idea in her head
“Should we not all work together to rid
Our neighborhood of branches, messy dogs
Loafing cars: making for good neighbors?”
Before I hired the branch cuter, I asked him:
“Please take the branches with you, when done!”
He also is a neighbor who lives nearby.
Something irritates my neighbor about us
My wife and I, whom she gives offence to;
She moves with slyness it seems to me,
Not of concern over those dry old branches.

I’m sure she likes having thought she done well
For the Neighborhood: firmly defending her heap.

*#1314 (From a morning dream came Branches 4/14/06)) Written in Lima, Peru))

See Dennis’ web site: http://dennissiluk.tripod.com