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The Write Stuff
I was a half
hour early for my lunch date last Saturday so I wandered around
the outdoor mall looking for interesting stores. Most of them
were the usual chains, but then I came upon a paper store and
was immediately enticed inside. I love stationery stores — the
bright colors, the textures, the designs, and all the writing
paraphernalia that accompanies the paper appeal to my senses. If
I could afford it I would write only on thick, handmade paper
the color of rich cream and use a fountain pen. But it’s not
only the expense that stops me. These days I no longer have the
time or reason to write a letter on creamy paper with a
feathered quill. I can’t even remember the last letter that I
wrote.
I write notes
all the time — short, hurried, rush-rush lines that say little
except, “I love you.” Occasionally I’ll send a thank-you or
write a condolence letter, but even those are becoming rare.
Earlier I sent a condolence note to my friend by entering a few
words in an online funeral home guest book. I was appalled and
relieved at the same time. I hated truncating my sorrow down to
a few words on a computer but was happy that I had saved myself
the time of card shopping. I’m ashamed of myself and beginning
to wonder if I’m still able to pen a hand-written letter.
It’s sad
because I’m an old-fashioned soul when it comes to electronic
communication. I’m not on Facebook; I don’t text, and I
definitely do not tweet or twitter. I do use e-mail, and I
confess that I write my columns on a computer. I used to use
big, yellow legal pads to jot down my sentences and ideas. Now
when I’m faced with a large piece of paper that needs filling, I
wonder where the nearest keyboard is. I’m caught in the limbo of
being Microsoft Word literate yet completely backwards at using
my thumbs to communicate, and I believe that’s true of many of
us.
Even the paper
store reflected my generation’s uneasiness in this brave new
electronic-writing world. Yes it carried rich, Italian
stationary accompanied by jewel-like pens, but most of the store
was taken up with scrapbooking chatchkes, wrapping paper and
ribbons, greeting cards, silly toys and card-making supplies.
There was more space taken up for card-making classes than for
the actual paper. It seems that if you don’t feel comfortable
handwriting long missives you can redirect your energy into
making the card itself.
Last week I
saw my trepidations echoed in a column written by Clif Garboden
in the February 7 edition of the Boston Globe. His column was
entitled, SWTHDTM? (So What The Heck Does This Mean?) In it he
describes his experience with a morning message that his friend
sent him:
“Roasted rutabagas.”
“The two-word message
showed up as a post in my Facebook “news feed” one morning. What
was I to make of this? Did my friend Melissa, way out in Bend,
Oregon, want a recipe? Was she typing in her sleep? Trying her
hand at avant garde poetry? So often these days, my immediate
reaction to the cryptic snippets of thought that people share
online is equally brief, namely, “What?!!!’’ Sometimes, I answer
posts with a simple question, such as, “Sorry, what are you
talking about?’’ but I seem to be the only one who’s curious or
uncool enough to admit that I just don’t get it.”
That would be
me, I just don’t get it. I am the epitome of uncool. I am the
one with boxes in the attic filled with letters that Steve wrote
me when we were separated in college and then again when I was
in Israel. He, in turn, has boxes of my letters tucked away
somewhere. I remember writing them to the melody of a soft
candle late at night in Coney Island and then again sitting on
the porch of my home in Israel. We filled pages of thick
stationery and sent them off, impatiently waiting for an answer.
It took at least a week for a letter to come back, assuming that
we immediately answered.
There was a
luxurious tension in the writing of these letters, a ceremony in
the fixing of the stamp and mailing them and the suspense of
waiting for the mail every day. And the delight of receiving and
holding and then opening the letter was so unbearably exciting.
Each letter was read and re-read and then read again, sighed
over, cried over, pored over like a long lost manuscript. How
can I ever impart that experience to a generation who, as
Garboden wrote,
“...inspired by
Twitter’s 140-character-per-missive limit, are trying to say
ever more with even less and creating model discussions for
people with short attention spans with nothing useful to say?
People typing with their thumbs on a keyboard the size of a
playing card. I worry about the consequences of minimalizing the
art of conversation to suit a new technology. Judging from
Facebook and Twitter exchanges a new language of brevity has
emerged that’s proving to be the soul more of confusion than
wit.”
Twittering
may be new and exciting but the message is fleeting. Who is
going to remember a tweet 30 years after it was sent? I fear we
are being undone by roasted rutabagas.
February 18, 2010
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