ONE OF THOSE DAYS

June 17, 2017    sixseventeenseventeen.. 

I used to write in a journal almost every day.. the kind with no lines.. so I'd sometimes sketch with my limited sketching..  today. no sketches.. 

It's a day that feels close to the end of days.  Dear friends on FB are discouraged and I, with too many projects that clog the pipeline and lead to ennui and no production.. sit here. wondering. 

Communication, as was pointed out in a semantics class that I am ever grateful for.. is about confirmation.. I send.. someone responds.. or doesn't.. which is a double edged sword.  Being ignored is a kind of response, but it's really not nice.  If someone is done with us; it would be good to hear that they are just done.  Of course, it may be that their device is not working, no signal or that they had their snail mail stolen or the mail truck burned to the ground.. or something.  

I've been complaining about the usurping of communication by the now well established 'tweet.'  That the man in the highest office in the land.. in the world?  'tweets' is indicative of how low we have fallen.  I think of great minds who wrote with the most elementary of writing devices. The Egyptians had papyrus and brushes or pens.  Cuniform on clay was used over four thousand years ago!!  Imagine Shakespeare with a quill and parchment or Virginia Wolfe with her lap tablet and maybe a pen and ink bottle?  The physical labor, even writing cursive or printing early in school for me was a chore, but expressed a hidden part of me. Typing! How easy this is because my mother insisted that I learn to type...

And now.. we go beyond to voice recognition! Hey Google! 

  A friend whose life is consumed with texting advises that we won't go back. Nothing I can do to stop 'progress..' as though abbreviations like 'u' and such are now a way to express ewe or you or yew?  No going back.  Do you have a fountain pen? Mont Blanc!?

The beauty of the long form: long hand.. cursive script.. is that it expresses something that is almost akin to voice and to even being face to face.. gone from school, I understand.. Mostly, I print.. but can write in cursive.. hah.  Remembering letters from a girl when I was twelve whose feminine hand was remarkable and sexy and kind.  And, today, years later...  a woman whom I still love with all my heart.. her fine hand : familiar ..  welcome, buoys me up. 

All those chores I mention, I should be on to, but here we are, my keyboard and I.. just cranking out a light weight complaint and longing for a letter with handwriting and even the most mundane message.. hello.. I miss you..  

Joni Mitchell's..  'we can't return, we can only look behind from where we came.. '  How do you make a zen circle on a keyboard?  There's probably a way, but the smell of the ink.. the mental preparation with brush in hand.. The single stroke.. one time only.. one of a kind.. starting dark and serious and then fading to a whisper..  in the circle game. 

michael sheehan

glendale, california..