Do you believe in signs? I'm sure I do. Each week I look for signs to indicate what the topic of my next column will be. Sometimes they are fragmentary and vapourish, and require further interpretations before they can be distilled into a subject matter that I can tackle.
On other occasions, they pop into my life with a sense of purpose and there isn't any doubt in my mind that this is my assignment for the week. I've just had one of those days.
I was recently hosted lunch by a beautiful couple and we were joined by the hostess's father, who was Japanese. We started talking about communication technology, and how much we rely on social media to keep in touch with each other. That's when she said that she and her father still communicate by fax.
I threw out my fax machine about 10 years ago, and even at the office it is rarely used. But the amazing part of this story was not the use of the dated fax machine, but the fact that her father, an impeccable, learned gentleman with wavy, silver hair, sent handwritten notes written with a brush in Chinese calligraphy.
He then proceeded to explain why the horsehair brush (from a three-year-old male horse no less) could capture beauty and emotions so much better than any other mode of writing. Each stroke was different in weight and emphasis, sometimes a tiny, fragile line, sometimes a full, determined stroke. All with the use of the same brush.
Look at clouds, he remarked. They are all different, just like the brushstrokes. I was captivated -- with a few words, he had reminded me of the long-lost beauty of the "written" word. He had reminded me how sensual it was to put pen to paper and actually let words flow from the tip of your nib instead of click-clacking sentences on a keyboard in Arial font 12.
His words brought me back to my childhood when we still had handwriting classes, tracing the precise lines from the Marion Richardson textbook, and making little patterns from mirrored lines of lower case "o" and "r".
My mother has the most beautiful handwriting I have ever seen. She would write down recipes, shopping lists, household accounting, and birthday cards, with her meticulous penmanship. Her letters leaned at a precise angle and each word ended with a flourish of the pen that looked as if the wind had swept her hand up just as her pen left the page.
My silver-haired gentleman showed me an example of his calligraphy -- one line of five characters that represented a philosophy of how to lead your life. The characters themselves had life -- they swooped and fluttered with the different weight of the brush strokes, some with a determined, masterful sweep, others a mere whisper, like a sniff kiss on a sleeping baby's cheek. Later that day, as the beauty of calligraphy was still etched on my mind, I had another epiphany. I was watching The Voice and enjoying the battle rounds. Judge Pharrell Williams was teaching one of his youngest team members how to tackle a song, and encouraging her to heighten her vibrato, explaining that singing a straight note was like typing in bold face, but "vibrato is like singing in calligraphy".
How weird, and how appropriate! The imagery made so much sense to me, and I could immediately see the dynamics of the song coming to life, just as the Chinese calligraphy had come to life on the sheet of white paper.
The Japanese man and Pharrell were on opposite sides of the globe, yet they shared the same ancient spirit. And both shared it with me on that same day, whether they realised it or not.
Signs? Epiphany? Call it what you will, but I went back to writing this column first with pen and paper, before click-clacking it in Arial font 12.
There's still beauty in life, if only you make room for it.
Usnisa Sukhsvasti is the features editor of the Bangkok Post.