Almost a Writer

"Where you been?" I asked him standing near the beer cooler in Whole Foods.

"I went out of town the last couple weekends.  Other than that, I haven't been doing anything.  I don't go out at all.  I'm starting to go stir crazy, though."  

"Too much alone time can do that," I said.  "I did that for about a year once.  It changes you."  

"Yea.  I got up yesterday and went to the refrigerator to get some milk for my coffee and I saw two chilled bottles of wine and thought about having a glass.  If I start that, I'm sunk.  But I stay up writing every night, drinking wine and just writing."

"You writing a novel?"  

"No, not yet.  I write these long emails, though, that are pretty good.  Some of them are real good.  But I'll put all this effort into writing them and get back a few lines that don't even address what I wrote about.  That's if I'm lucky.  Sometimes, I don't get anything back at all.  It really pisses me off."  

"Well, people don't write much any more.  First they gave up on letters, then they gave up on email.  Now most people don't write much that is longer than a text message."  

"Well, it's wrong," he growled.  "The world is going to shit!" 

"Sure, sure it is, but you can't get too caught up in how other people are going to respond to what you do.  You just do it for yourself."  I said it, but I could tell he wasn't hearing it.  I picked up my bottle of ale and told him I had to go.  

"Good luck, man," I said.  He was obviously distraught.  

When I was in Manhattan, the people I was with never talked on the phone.  That was cool.  But they always had their iPhone or Blackberry on vibrate and every few minutes, they would get a text.  They'd thumb out a reply and say, "Hey, there's a crowd at Crumleys.  You want to head down there?"  This went on all night.  

It's all OK, but I'm going back to writing letters.  As silly as this sounds, it seems an art to me now, the handcrafting of letters on paper, ink, textures, etc.  I like the new world well enough, but I'm too romantic to let go of the old.  Maybe I'll have a glass of wine this morning.