mail

sometimes i try to remember before we had instant written communication, such as e-mail and text messaging. never mind my first office jobs where the fax machine was the most critical piece of equipment and i left with black fingertips from sheets of carbon paper, never mind those memories - i'm referring to personal communication.

i do remember my first cell phone, but i don't remember my first text. (the two were far, far apart.) and i do remember my first email account; it's the one that daily receives over a hundred spam items, still to this day. (not the one i use for personal communication, obviously.)

even after i opened that account though, in '93 i think, i was a letter writer. a paper and pencil type of letter writer. i wrote letters that covered sheets and sheets of notebook paper - (stationary size sheets are a joke) - front and back. and i wrote them weekly to my best friend from college, when i left montreat. the volumes that they could fill are boggling; and probably quite tedious, but the stamps were always carefully selected and the words laboriously chosen.

the transition from paper to email never really worked for me. though i use email for personal communication, it's never felt truly personal and as such, i've only rarely used it in a significant way. and those intervals were short lived.

so, predictably the transition from a long-hand paper letter writing to text messaging of 160 characters or less (as the early phones stipulated) was painful and nearly impossible for me. think of john irving suddenly restricted to haiku. yep. and i simply didn't do it much until that restriction loosened.

i remember the glee i felt when phones could send your lengthy text in multiple messages - finally i could get a whole thought out! of course, the order in which the text fragments arrived was anybody's guess. but i didn't mind that as i do love a good puzzle. i'd try to limit myself to a two, or at worst three, part message.

and that brings me to now.. when i can type on ad infinitum and my iphone won't tell me to stop or inform me of how many messages it's turning into. and frankly i don't care.. i've abandoned all the handy text shorthand i've accumulated over the years (and where i try to use it, the iphone's 'brain' converts it to a word. occasionally the one i want.) and i've come to rely on text messaging as my primary form of communication with some people.

but although i've surrendered my pencil and paper and accepted electronic communication's place in my life, i find myself nostalgic for long-hand at times. i find myself missing the texture of paper and the hand writing study and the smell of where it came from and where it passed through... and quite simply i find myself missing the expression it permitted and contained.

but.. maybe there's a silver lining. i am sure there is. environmentally friendly. that's it. and think of all the time i've freed up. those multi-page handwritten letters took hours. and blogging - there's a writing advent of the 21st century.

tonight i'm nostalgic for sharpened pencils; but as i look around my house i see more computers than pointed lead.. and more cell phones than envelopes. and still i write. still i am long-hand in a shorthand world.

d: a letter in the mail
b: i'll write back, i promise!
g: though the medium evolves, words remain steady.