As You Like It: 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.

Short URL: https://www.thecantoncitizen.com/?p=1510

Posted by Joan Florek Schottenfeld on Feb 18 2010. Filed under As You Like It, Opinion. Both comments and pings are currently closed.