Animals
make their mark by rubbing, digging, and/or relieving themselves on it. We sign
our name.
Though
abstract, a written name carries material power. It can be the difference
between financial liberation and hindering debt, between getting a promotion
and getting fired, going free or serving time, fact versus legend.
How
we write our name is as unique as the fingerprints holding the pen, and it
reveals something about us. If the prescriptions I've gotten filled are an
indication, physicians are too busy to write carefully or feel that legibility
is beneath them, while a slave's "X" on a pre-Abolition document is a
tragic symbol of his captive illiteracy.
Because
inscription is so individual, it's also very emotional. It's why forgery feels
like such a deep violation, and why collectors pay big money for autographs at
auction: to feel closer to celebrities by acquiring their essence in ink.
More
than fluent scribbling, the signature is the face of our penmanship, the
insignia of ourselves.
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