What is Less or More than a Touch?

Two weeks ago I found a forgotten love letter that helped me understand why I am losing my memory.

I was perusing the books in the stacks at the New York Public Library on 42nd street when I pulled “The Social Origins of the Iranian Revolution” off the shelf — the cover was yellowed and looked graphically outdated. The book had the musty, damp smell of having been too long on the library shelves, or having been passed through many, many hands. But flipping through the chapters of the book, a blue card fell out onto the floor. It was a love letter. “I’m sorry, my love,” it started, and was signed “Tommy.” Tommy was writing to someone who had been for many years his friend. He was sorry for not having told the person to whom the letter was addressed that he loved her/him sooner. “Now in our thirties and after knowing each other for years,” Tommy could not imagine a future without the reader of the letter, and wanted nothing more than to be with her/him. He hoped she would forgive him for his long-standing lack of gumption (my words) and would be with him. They would have a very beautiful life together, he was sure.

But there it was: a love letter left in the library book for what appeared to be years. Who was she? When was she? Had she responded, or was her response merely to forget this letter in her library book? While I’m sure I’ll never know the answers to those questions, my experience with this mystery letter made me think about the power of the senses and of the third dimension.

After all, I will remember this book and the moment I found it, will remember the sickening, steamy heat of the stacks, how my right shoulder hurt under the weight of my bag of papers. When I think of this book, I will remember the color blue of the card that fell into my hands, will recall Tommy and his writing like an architect. In fact, I will also remember everything about that book; the author, when, where and by whom it was published. I have touched the same book that this man’s beloved friend had touched, have held it, smelled it, and studied it. In so doing, I felt a connection with it and with all the people through whose hands the book had passed.

But do I remember the hundreds of articles and book excerpts I’ve read in PDF form, or in online databases? Certainly I remember key ideas and some phrases, but globally I have a hard time recalling which arguments go with what scholar (not a good problem to have in graduate school) and certainly couldn’t tell you exactly when or if I read any particular article without a moment’s thought or without scrolling through the article to refresh my memory. Had I held those books in my hands, or the journals in which the articles were published, I’m sure I would remember them.

The fact of the matter is that we live in a world that is becoming less and less memorable—we are given ever fewer clues with which to remember communication. I think of Walt Whitman’s words from the first edition of Leaves of Grass which say, “I pass so poorly with paper and types…I must pass with the contact of bodies and souls.” Were he alive today, might he have said the he passed so poorly with emails and text messages? Perhaps he might have, as the message I think he was communicating was one of experiencing a disconnect with humanity.

There is after all nothing human about a computer screen. Something about the flatness of the screen and the uniformity of the letters of words as they appear on it causes me to forget what I read in this way. An email presents the same problem to me; its format, regardless of who sends it or from where, offers the same impersonal experience each time I read one. I cannot touch it, cannot assign individual personality to it, therefore I cannot easily remember it. An email gives me no sensorial or human clues to help me do so. Again, Walt Whitman: “The insignificant is as big to me as any, What is less or more than a touch?”

How sad to live without being able to hold the handwriting of a dear friend or family member in one's hand, or to live without the sight of the envelope that has traveled across continents and seas to reach one's mailbox! I received a letter recently from a friend far away from New York—in Sweden—whom I have not seen in years. This friend writes epic letters once or twice a year and I love them and remember them, no matter how much he writes, because of how present my friend feels when I receive his letters. They are filled with reasons to remember: I see the handwriting move from tidy on the first page, to messier towards the fourth, see the change of pen on the fifth page. On the second he is drinking tea, and has spilled a drop on the paper, which he tells me. Sorry, he says—and there, the page is tea-stained. On the last page he apologizes, too, because rain fell on the notebook as he made his way to class that evening, causing the paper to be wavy and some of the letters to smear. Holding in my hands the tea, the rain, the handwriting—they are clues to remembering his words, all, and a way for me to feel that I’ve walked through Stockholm, although I’ve never been.

One of the definitions of virtual is: “of, relating to, or being a hypothetical particle whose existence is inferred from indirect evidence…” Although a strange thing to say on a blog, and although I will continue to engage in it, I do not LIKE virtual communication, and moreover do not want “indirect evidence” of the existence of human beings; the evidence I want is direct.

………

After her death, my great-great grandmother left behind dozens of handwritten journals which record everything from how many pies she made per day for the many boarders and family members in her Michigan home, to weather patterns. And at the end of most of the daily journal entries over a series of years, she writes in the same controlled script as the one in which she writes for counting pies, “Mel did not come last night.” Mel was her husband, who obviously was terribly unfaithful; though she died decades and decades before I was born, I feel I know something about her from her handwriting as she writes those words, her emotion buried deep inside her stable mind, not once causing her steady hand to tremble. The strength of this woman who was my great-great grandmother is in the pages of the journals she left behind to be touched, held and felt.

But what will remain of us for our great-great grandchildren? A password to archived emails and blogs? Doubtful. And into what hands will misplaced love emails fall?

For those of you who know me, you know I write letters and keep many hand-written journals, so to you my message is certainly clear; let us not abandon hand-written communication for the virtual world. After all, virtual memories are quite difficult to retain; and what is a culture without memory?