The Way, Way Back Machine

Restaurant and bar, Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn. September 2007

Going through some of my old journals recently, I came upon the following entry from September, 1997 -- and was stunned by how much has happened to me and to technology in ten years -- obviously, the concept of blogging still lay far ahead. I guess I do sound like myself, but without a clear self-identification yet as a serious writer. This entry also contained a description of my father-in-law's cardiac bypass, at age 88, which I'll add to the stories about him; a mention of our sixteenth wedding anniversary; and a note that Lady Diana had just died.

"Someday someone will write about e-mail being the death of letters, if they haven’t already, but will they also write about it as the death of journals? I have pages and pages of e-mail correspondence from this year, but the idea of collecting it, organizing it, putting it into Word files, and printing it makes me faint with fatigue. But I am sad at the thought of losing a whole year’s worth of thoughts and reflections. I find myself wondering if the e-mail form itself, though, breeds a kind of terse, abbreviated writing which lacks depth and substance. I know I try to write well no matter what the medium – a postcard even – but how much am I leaving out by the lack of a journal discipline, and the total lack of what any literary-minded person could call “letters”? The other day I received a long message – a letter, really – from PZ about the birth and first month of his daughter’s life. It was wonderful. But I find myself missing the fat envelope, the anticipation of carrying something with real weight home from the post office and opening it up to find someone’s actual handwriting – written, no less, to ME. And I find myself somewhat ashamed and saddened to notice how quickly I have given it all up myself – and thus deprived my closest friends and family of the same pleasure.

The reason I don’t do this is that it just takes too much time. Writing takes time, and I don’t have it. But will I feel impoverished in ten or twenty years when there is no record, nothing to read of how we spent our days? I wonder. I was thinking yesterday about the three summer stories I wanted to write last year – one about judging Grange booths at the Rutland Fair, one about Fran’s wedding, and one about evensong at the Cornish church. I took notes, but never wrote the stories – and now they are gone. I tried to reconstruct them in my mind, and the essence is still there, but not the details, and although the essence is the most important, I don’t think I can convey it without more details than I can remember. Maybe it would come back, if I tried – but when?"

Comments

[Peter]

Wow -- blogging to the rescue!

[Planethalder]

I love flicking through pages of writing, stumbling across things with the flip of a hand. I have three years' worth of Planethalder I want to print out and file so that I can browse it at leisure if I choose, alongside the more private handwritten journal I also maintain. Moreover, I see the printed word as a legacy to my future children. But the thought of printing it all out daunts me. Has anyone here printed out their blog?

[Dick]

Do you still miss that fat envelope, Beth? Much as I cherish the ease of email, I do. Maybe we sentimentalists should eschew email for a month & write each other longhand letters in black ink from italic pens...

[Peter]

Many happy returns of the day, as I think Owl said to Winnie the Pooh ...

I used to think it was a shame to type a letter, but I did all the time after I learned to type because my handwriting was and is wretched and I am not proud of it (besides, being lefthanded, my hand drags in the ink no matter how I try not to keep from smudging). Annie's fifth-grade teachers are telling her now that she must do her work in cursive, but her fourth-grade teacher never covered the skill, being too buried in achievement-test requirements to get into niceties. Wednesday we spent the entire evening writing out five sentences, partly because we were having trouble shaping an "s" and a "p," (the capital "G" was beyond us both) and partly because one of us was trying to make a point about "I can either make it neat or make it fast ..."

I brought along some worksheets on cursive writing, two grammar books and a novel. All of them proved useful -- every three paragraphs or so of the novel, I would issue a reminder about focusing on the work and not on dissecting pens, bouncing balls or capturing bugs, to the end of making the point that the task would get done no matter how late it got. Curiously, the second and third pages of this really dismal chore -- nothing has changed in elementary education since Dewey's day, whatever claims you hear to the contrary -- got done a lot faster than the first one.

I was pleased to have my patience rewarded. However, I did have some quiet fantasies involving that fourth-grade teacher and a dull spoon.

[Miguel]

As always your post has gotten me thinking. Much as it is important to embrace the truth that life is ephemeral and that everything eventually passes, and the internet and email, like oral conversation, embody the transient by their very lack of physical substance, I can't help but wonder what kind of legacy will remain once we are gone. All these conversations flitting across the planet in silent cacophony, but there is nothing we touch and say, "See, here? This is what I did!" What is that difference between a writer of letters or one of books or one of letters? Will there ever be truly great blog writers, ones we cherish the way we do the great classical writers? Or, if we abandon book and letter writing, will we then lose the satsifaction of holding in our hand something which starts at the beginning, runs through a middle, and comes to an ending? Blogs and email are neverending; there is never any climax and coming to rest. And nearly all of it is done anonymously and unseen.

[Rachel]

For reasons which remain opaque to me, this post keeps reappearing in my aggregator... perhaps it's the universe's way of encouraging me to write more paper letters! :-)

[marja-leena]

Beth, I hear you! Your words have been lingering in my mind, and today while I was emailing a friend, I thought of them once again. I've thought of printing many of the favourite emails though many have been lost, as well as printing my blog, but it certainly would be a huge endeavour in time and effort!