Letters

"We boast that we belong to the nineteenth century, and are making the most rapid strides of any nation. But consider how little this village does for its own culture....It is time that villages were universities...."
— Thoreau, Walden (Everyman's Library version, p. 96-97)

Letter from grade school friend yesterday. She called me Pajamas, her old nickname for me. Her handwriting looks astonishingly similar to grades 6/7.

I wrote her back, pulling all the stops: fountain pen, Eaton paper, about 5 stamps of varying values on the envelope: pomegranate, silver coffeepot, teapot, Navajo necklace with turquoise. Feels more like art than using the computer does, for sure.

Back in the old days — which I'm desperately trying to revive in small ways here and there, like letters – this was the way distant friends & I kept touch. Back when I had time. I would put on some music, lay down on the floor or sit at the mechanical typewriter purchased for 3 bucks at a yard sale, and write. Go out to class, or work, or a meal, and come back and write some more. Excerpt a book I liked or was reading at the time. I haven't managed this kind of one-to-one mastery with email yet.

Package from Cisco Systems? It's Not a New Router.

"Working with obstacles is life's journey. The warrior is always coming up against dragons."
— Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape, p. 68





Still January 30, 2009

This morning right after the boys left I had an opportunity to visit with a good friend in the neighborhood. She was getting ready to head up to Camp Mechuwana for a winter retreat. We talked for a while.

Walking home I stopped at the Rosemont Market for leek, onion, red bell pepper, domestic feta, tortillas, then headed for home in between the mountains of snow from the plows, shovels, snow blowers. I was feeling a bit frightened and scattered about heading back to an “empty” house.

When I opened the door to the front porch, there was a package for me from Cisco Systems in Seattle. Usually packages from tech companies are for Jeff but this one was clearly addressed to me.

Took me a minute to realize that it was from Julie Wieringa, my former boss at AT&T Wireless, and that she’d probably shipped me a copy of her classical guitar CD.

Indeed. Also included were a lovely letter and two letterpressed books that she made — one a sweet story (illustrated) about a man and his dog, and the other a 6 x 9 letterpressed journal with musical staff pages on the left, lined writing pages on the right. And a letter written by hand in ink — she has a phenomenal fountain pen collection.

If I were in my old life, I would not find the time to write her back, but I’ll probably write her tonight. In my old life I would e-mail her, or Facebook her a reply. Enthusiastically. Lovingly. Instead she’ll get a nice letter, handwritten in ink, on stationery.

All the Names for Snow

"When faced with a radical crisis, when the old way of being in the world, of interacting with each other and with the realm of nature doesn't work anymore, when survival is threatened by seeminly insurmountable problems, an individual life-form — or a species — will either die or become extinct or rise above the limitations of its condition through an evolutionary leap."
— Eckhart Tolle

Still January 26, 2009

Coming up the walk just a little while ago, the snow had that Very Cold Squeak. We need more words for snow, in all its permutations. Like the Inuit. “Snow” just doesn’t cut it when you’re in the dead of winter.

We need more exciting ways to describe what’s underfoot….like Really F***ing Cold Snow, Deliriously Mushy Snow, Snowman snow, snowball fight snow, Snow that Has Had Freezing Rain Fall on It and Is Now Strong Enough to Support an Eight Year Old Without Them Falling Through. But these types need poetic names! There are just way more types of snow than just “snow”.

Mia’s been writing me letters. It’s great to get cards. Tonight the novelty of writing letters feels slightly worn off, just the way I didn’t want to sit down and write this.

On Friday, another first. Sitting at home in the front room (right now, the massage room) to study instead of going down to the Old Port….staying at home is much cheaper, and I wasn’t feeling all that great…and it became evident that studying at home used to be punctuated with being on the internet.

It’s funny to think that only a month ago this was such a part of my life and that in less than a month I’ve effectively been set free from it. In any case—there would be a period of studying, after which I’d reward myself with some time on Facebook, or checking email. How much brain power and time were spent anticipating these moments or processing these moments afterwards are what scare me. Much more than the 2-3 hours I spent online, on average. Possibly more.

Ol' Lappie

[view from Kettle Cove]






A chickpea leaps almost over the rim of the pot where it's being boiled.
'Why are you doing this to me?'
The cook knocks him down with the ladle.
'Don't you try to jump out.
You think I'm torturing you.
I'm giving you flavor
so you can mix with spices and rice
and be the lovely vitality of a human being.'

— Rumi, "Chickpea to Cook," from The Essential Rumi tr. Coleman Barks

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

OK, the compulsory 5 minutes of notes.

Nice fireside chat with Lindsey today in our living room. Talked about kids, the Obamas, racism. All very good. Nice to be with her. I don’t know when the last time we had the opportunity to sit in a room for an hour together and talk. We’re going to do it again, in theory, in a couple weeks. Not next Tuesday. Next Tuesday the plan is to be at Brenda’s to watch the inauguration.
*
It’s interesting how much I loathe this computer at times. It has done nothing to me but has unwittingly been a ball and chain at times due to the internet. Even picking up the plug to plug it into the wall (because the battery runs down quickly and I refuse to replace it right now) — the way it feels in my hand, rubbery, somewhat dirty, cumbersome with its heavy square midsection; the heat it radiates into my lap or onto whatever piece of furniture it happens to be sitting on — the fire of the sun of the dinosaurs (fossil fuel to electricity to spinning hard drive to warm computer). I’d much rather be warming in front of the fire only.

Of course…these notes would be much sparser, much less likely were it not for Ol’ Lappie.
*
Letter from Mia today—I don’t know when it came in — it was on the counter in the stack of miscellaneous items that collect there. Dated 1/6. Nice 2 page letter hand -written — fun to see her handwriting again — tucked inside a photograph card showing a frog driving a car.
*
Text message from a friend to which I returned with a phone call. Not sure I will continue to receive or respond in any way to text messages. I’m starting to punch the button on my phone again obsessively. Of course today Jeff headed to Arkansas for 3 days and he was texting me with progress updates and family business. That is different.

Snowflakes on the virtual Appalachian Trail

But don't be satisfied with stories, how things
have gone with others. Unfold
your own myth....
— Rumi, tr. Coleman Barks

This morning: the snow coming down very lightly, big flakes. But it was very cold. They were magnificent, tiny, hexagonal flakes.

We had Monday homeschool coop for the first time in ages. Angie pulled a piece of black velvet out of her pocket and I went into the kitchen to retrieve the two magnifying glasses. We caught some flakes and we looked. Observed. Kids huddled around. What’s falling out of the sky right now? Don’t breathe too close to them or they will melt away to droplets of water!
*
We have in so many instances traded the immediacy of opening a letter, of a poem, of this, whatever this may be, for a false immediacy. Messages are retrieved, little black words on a screen, that for the most part poorly approximate the realness of a person.

But the immediacy, when observed from the outside, is: person interacting with machine. And whatever this is can only be experienced by me, and cannot, most of the time, be a shared experience. Like me and my friends and their children observing the snowflakes this morning as they alighted on a bit of black velvet. Even that person on the other end of the text message is not sharing a real experience with me, except of messaging on our phones!

Nothing I have ever experienced socially via the internet could approximate the experience of sitting in a room full of actual people — the way they look, move, smell, sound, laugh. The way it feels to be touched by one of them. It’s a known fact that many, many of us are living in a state of touch deprivation and computers are partially, if not entirely, to blame.

Even in a platonic, casual conversation, there might be a hug exchanged, or a hand laid upon an arm. These simple gestures can draw an otherwise isolated person back into the collective experience, can provide that much-needed human contact that is lacking. Computers are not warm and loving. They are cold and toxic. People are warm and loving (and, well, I suppose some people are toxic!).

There is not enough of this in this wired world — of people sitting in a room together, enjoying the moment, not having to save it or store it (except perhaps a photograph, a memory, a poem, a journal entry) but mostly to breathe it in and breathe it out. To live it and to let it go.

As I hike away from the internet on my virtual Appalachian Trail there is so little I miss and much that leads me to feel that another year like this might be good.

National Cathedral School · Mrs. Forbes · Sarah E.

“I like opening a letter and thinking myself loved.” – Virginia Woolf

Completely awesome. I just checked our p.o. box up the street here and there was an honest-to-god letter from Sarah Edmunds, a close friend from middle school. We reconnected on Facebook and she was willing to correspond off the internet.

I sent a postcard last week. She photocopied a program from a voice recital we were both part of in the eighth grade, led by Mrs. Forbes at NCS. She wrote a quick note on it; what a huge difference receiving something real and unexpected. So….I stopped by the Paper Patch again because stodgy stationary didn’t seem right to write Sarah back (I have that to write to my mother, who likes it).

So I got a box of something fun. How expressive to write a note, in blue-black ink, to my friend. So different from email. Email: I thought of you. Letter: I love you. Enough to take an hour and write you, only you, a letter.