Mea Culpa first.
The Poiesis blog had slowed down during the summer, mainly due to unfortunate injury to my right hand, which in turn first stalled and then slowed my typing and writing. I will be gradually back to the intended pace. The “break”, however, revealed few observations:
(1) The volume of textual communication (emails, texts, notes) are written without much thought. Writing polite and laconic responses is hard!
(2) How AI on voice-activated typing is still behind the curve for voices with accents! For short phone messages and texts, the voice app was fine. For longer word documents, the voice-activated typing was awkward and slow, but doable. For typing technical documents (latex, programming codes), one might as well think of AI as being non-existent.
(3) How staggering is the differential in the abilities of our two hands: I learned that I am truly not ambidextrous.
The positive thing about the quietude due to the absence of writing is the increase in the volume of reading.
As I read through David McCullough’s excellent biography of President John Adams, I came across a story about Thomas Jefferson.
In 1782, a widower at the age of 39, and having already lost four of his children when they were young, Thomas Jefferson was bereft with grief, imposed himself into exile in Monticello seeking time and silence as medicine. He was eventually convinced to become the Minister Plenipotentiary to France.
In Paris, in 1786, Thomas Jefferson fell madly in love with Maria Cosway, a 27-year old married Englishwoman. By all accounts, they were constant social companions. Towards the end of Maria’s stay in Paris, Thomas Jefferson had an accident (the accounts on how the accident occurred differ significantly) and broke his right wrist.
Thomas Jefferson was right-handed.
After their last meeting, in love and agony, contemplating romance and temperance, Thomas Jefferson taught himself to write with his left hand and wrote the “Head and Heart” letter entirely with his left hand.
It is an unusual love letter: Polemic and Poetic. Constrained and carefree. Head and heart.
It doesn’t compare to the eloquence and intellect in the Declaration of Independence, but the letter is possibly the best thing that Thomas Jefferson wrote with his left hand.
Notes:
One can find a scanned copy of the letter in the Library of Congress. Here is a textual transcription of the letter at Founders’ Archive.