Other Calligraphies

I’ve always enjoyed watching snails: they are unhurried, they carry their house with them, and their retracting eyes are surely the envy of any alien. They are also among the best of nature’s calligraphers. The dotted-line trail they leave, pictured at right, sends gardeners into a murderous rage, but in its own way it’s lovely, an intermittent aftertrace of the movement of a creature not in haste (unlike the beautiful lateral fury of a sidewinder’s forward/sideways tracks).

Last week I paid a visit to a physical therapist (I had a horse-related injury from January that’s still bothering me). I was given a set of exercises to do: the obvious flexing and circular motions… The third got me smiling: draw the entire alphabet, daily, with my foot! (By the time you reach Z, you’ve gone through every range of motion available to the ankle joint.) Roman, Italic, Uncial, Carolingian, or Humanist? I’m loving it. It makes going to meetings a whole lot more fun.