B.,

As requested, but it's not as if it's the greatest I've ever produced.

The alphabet set above is in the tedious Merrill-Palmer that they brow-beat us to master in Ateneo Grade School. As a matter of fact we had a completely separate subject titled "Writing", which had nothing to do with creative writing but everything to do with Merrill-Palmer penmanship. I still remember the stern and unforgiving face of my writing drill teacher, though I've forgotten his name.

Yes, this is how every Atenean writes, and remains the one way to identify Ateneans who actually went to Ateneo Grade School and Ateneo High School rather than simply to an Ateneo college.

When I was enrolled for an M.A. in Clinical Psychology I had a British classmate named Oriel Muspratt. She had deliciously exquisite penmanship which was such a far cry from Merrill-Palmer and, for some time, I practiced penmanship in her peculiar style. Eventually I settled for what I call "Cubao Caribbean", the alphabet set below, which is what I now use. Note that it is looser and has more loops and swashes. Indeed, using it has made me hang looser, and I am no longer the uptight grade school and high school student that I was.

Changing one's penmanship, I believe, is not so much a gesture of rebellion or a search for identity. It is the quest to establish one's individuality in what I'd call "Method Writing" a la Stanislavski.

I wrote these with a fine dip-pen nib with green Art Spectrum pigmented ink on an unused music sheet notebook that my son Chito had when he was in grade school, and that I recently found while cleaning.