Anne Carson published an essay this week in the London Review of Books entitled, “Beware the man whose handwriting sways like a reed in the wind”. She’s 74, dealing with Parkinson’s Disease, a neurological condition that damages the nerve cells in the part of the brain called the substantia nigra. In Latin, that means the black part. It’s a version of our black box. Our recorder.

She’s taken to boxing three times a week. She says, “Its combination of difficult cardiovascular effort and deliberate focusing of the mind has proven to reduce the symptoms and slow the progress of the disease.” I think about rewiring the brain. She thinks about how her handwriting had diminished, the opposite of Keats, and his flowing, steady prose. I put more effort into my scrawling handwriting this week. Aiming to rewire the unexpressed genes. She quotes an Icelandic composer, who says, “almost as if writing by hand has the same quality as playing. Or that the music is more real, not as generic as it sometimes seems when writing on the computer.” I’m aware I am writing this on a computer. I try to write the more meaningful parts in a neon-coloured Moleskin notebook. The brain also transcribes physically but without the aid of a Muji 0.38 pen. Anne quotes from The Brain that Changes Itself, where the psychiatrist Norman Doidge writes:

Each cell in our body contains all our genes, but not all those genes are turned on, or expressed. When a gene is turned on, it makes a new protein that alters the structure and function of the cell. This is called the transcription function because when the gene is turned on, information about how to make these proteins is ‘transcribed’ or read from the individual gene.

She finishes with a transcription of Catullus, a Roman poet (c. 84-54 BCE). The last lines she quotes:

Pepper: Why not take the shorter way home.

Catullus: There was no shorter way home.