Last Friday Writers during break, one of the gals was intently scrolling down her phone until she came upon an email she wanted to share with the group. While I certainly have my opinions about being read to via I-things and other mechanical stewards for reasons thousands, the listening experience—the receiving of the story—was not cheapened by its plastic bookends, as is my typical experience. In fact, au contraire mon frere; I hung on every digitized word as an amazingly moving story typed by a friend in grief unfolded so beautifully we may as well have been sitting around the campfire. When she finished, we all sat in reverent silence.
Then we begged to hear her response...what she had emailed back to the friend in grief... the continuation of the story. By then we were so drawn into the exchange, we would have waited forever to hear her reply read aloud, even if it came out of a Ouija Board, never mind a cell phone.
The hunger for human connection, especially through storytelling is encoded in our human genes. The most beautiful thing in the world about the invention of the alphabet is that at one time we hungered for that connection so deeply that we learned how to scrape letters from the forest floors, branches, skies and sunsets and string them into words. Did we do that to get a good grade in cave-making class? No. We did that because by expressing our stories, hopes, griefs, dreams, love, etc in words on paper (or cave walls) we knew there was a chance that those words may perhaps, perchance, be received by another. It blows my mind that we have moved so far from acknowledging and embracing this simple miracle.
I know I have. I know I send countless mindless texts and emails just because I can. I also know that I send countless mindful ones for the sheer pleasure of it. Pleasure? We never can really know where the words will tumble and fall on the page. We never know what unexpected hallways of memory will appear as we let loose on the page and follow the inky trail. We never know what emotions may linger just beneath the surface and which answers dance beneath that layer. We discover what we love, fear, and wish for, and how certain words and images feel as they move through the body and onto the page.
All this is to say that I am known to write epic emails, often overflowing with loving thoughts and poetic word play. Of course these raw writings are never consciously intended for publication, yet they remain the best writing I ever do, similar to the RAW WRITING we do in my classes. Your inner critic cannot find you in this sacred writing space, does not know how to survive here. (Rest assured it returns when you decide to publish or share the thing, but we'll deal with that later.)
Wanna see what I mean? Here's a line I wrote this week in a quick email of thanks to a friend: "Because in a rainstorm, the trees somehow know to bend and cradle the wild wind." I was talking about how we, as humans, imitate nature, especially in regards to how we "know" how to care for one another. It just came out of me. I don't know how or why. It just did. I'm sure if I prethought it, or wrote it in the context of publishing, it would have been out the door before I even thought it up. Now. I'm not at all saying this because I think it's such a striking line of literary art; I'm just saying it was the truest most effective way to express what I was trying to say.
Earlier in the email I had questioned the origin of my free spiritedness, given its anachronistic tendency to get me in trouble here in the Midwest. I won't quote myself again, but it had something to do with rings of a tree and the Hollywood bigtop.
So at the end of Friday Writers I got the bright idea that we ought to bring in and read any beautiful or moving emails/texts/notes/etc—either ones you wrote or received— to read aloud and share in class. So, this then is your prompt. What words of communication have surprised you in their raw beauty? Can be a note you found from long ago, yesterday's email, or maybe a text you've yet to send... This is sort of along the lines of "seeing beauty in everything," with a twist. I'd be jumping for joy to read any of these (of course with permission of any sender's). Or, you can post them at the, yes, really, blog, BEAUTIFUL EMAIL. (forgive me! I'm Link Happy!)
Sad, but true to think that in the not too distant future we will be waxing nostalgic over the days of long emails written and sent with the miracle of click and send. "It was too good to be true," we'll soon say between telepathic exchanges to our beloveds across the planets. Of course in the beginning I opposed email, perhaps for the the same reasons I now oppose Facebook, but I don't have anything against letters sent via post. Remember those?
And now... Click. Send. Connect?
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