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Category: communicating

At Our Fingertips

At Our Fingertips

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This morning I’ve found myself reading about the wedding of a woman I do not know, will never meet but who provided a link to a story about her nuptials on her travel blog, which I’ve been sampling. 

I have good friends, people I’ve known for years, whose wedding pictures I’ve never glimpsed and probably never will.  But I could describe in detail the gold lace gown that Caroline wore on her special day in 2016.  Such is life in the digital age. 

In fact, there’s a chance that you are, even as we speak, reading a post by someone you don’t know, writing about someone she doesn’t know. 

For some of us, the world at our fingertips is much more real than the one outside our door. 

“OK, Boomer “

“OK, Boomer “

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Sometimes a phrase hits the zeitgeist so squarely that it becomes the mantra of a generation. For mine, it was “don’t trust anyone over 30.” For the Millennials, it seems to be “OK, Boomer.”

Twice within the last two days I’ve heard or read about “OK, boomer,” the dismissive reply young people make to “olds” who don’t get (fill in the blank) climate change, student debt or how to rotate a PDF.  The phrase lit up the Twitterverse, the editorial pages and will be featured on a radio show I occasionally listen to. There are retorts and retorts of retorts.

Here’s how millennial Morgan Sung ends a Mashable essay on the topic: “Saying ‘OK, Boomer’ now is even funnier because of how pressed the Boomers get. And you know what we say to that? OK, Boomer.”

If I’m aware of something like this, I figure it’s probably on the way out. But just in case it isn’t, I will refrain from generational preaching. Because that would just be playing into their hands, you know.

Voiceless

Voiceless

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The hoarseness I had last week finally caught up with me this weekend when I lost my voice entirely. It was not altogether unwelcome. It gave me an opportunity to drop out, sleep in, and read — to float along in another world for a few hours.

As I enter Day 2 with minimal voice power, I find myself noticing all the things I can’t do: sing hymns at church, order sliced turkey at the deli counter, instruct a rowdy doggie to behave.

If my voice is still rocky tomorrow I will have to navigate the workplace in silence, too.

All of which makes me think about our voice — our aural calling card, that which announces us to the world. As unique as we are, and sometimes as vulnerable, too.

Land Lines

Land Lines

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I almost called the old number last night — 253-0163. I didn’t, but I thought of it. My fingers were ready for those digits, itching to play an old tune I once knew by heart.

It was an easy number to remember when I learned it, had a brisk pace and memorable cadence. But 253-0163 had nothing on 266-8078, the land line of my youth. I knew this number when we were both still wet behind the ears — when it was only 68078. It was the number I lisped as a preschooler, the number I called from college (only for minutes at a time, long distance costing what it did in those days).

I’m convinced these numbers will be some of the last things to leave my brain. Which is why I can’t give up on 620-6118. It’s a land line, too, of course. And though you can’t text it, the number has many things in its favor, chief among them being that it belongs to a house and not a person.

An old-fashioned view to be sure, which my resident millennial reminds me of all the time. But I like how it works when cell numbers don’t. I like its continuity through years. And so, even though it’s fashionable to fly solo, I think I’ll keep it.

(Photo: Wikimedia)

Unsaid Words

Unsaid Words

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Thinking today about words I wished I’d said. Phrases more pithy and promising that any that could be uttered in the moment. Where do these words live?

Do they float in the ether, always just out of grasp? Do they settle in the soul like a stone?

They aren’t much help; I know that. They’re not there when you want them and hang around far too long when you don’t.

I need to reimagine them, to take away their power. To see them as a pleasant landscape or as old books on library shelves, friends we don’t yet know but hope to meet someday.

Relic

Relic

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We used to search for glasses, keys and phone numbers. Now we also search for passwords.  And yesterday my password search took me here, to the most undigital of places, my old Rolodex, where I used to keep a card with those pesky open sesames.

I never found the card, but I did spend a few minutes flipping through the Rolodex. It’s dusty and neglected, poor thing. I haven’t touched it for months, haven’t used it for years. But oh, the memories it holds, the connections it made possible, the worlds it opened up.

There are editors’ phone numbers, the contact information of long-forgotten sources, strings of numbers I once knew as well as my own. Each card tells a story. There’s that infant sleep expert who took to calling me at all hours, including when I was in labor with my first child! There’s a phone number for the Population Reference Bureau, which I just Googled to find a ticking world population clock (7, 718, 240, 013 — I mean 014, 015, 016 …). 

Before we swiped and tapped, we paged through and wore out. Most of these cards are bent and softened from frequent touching, tangible proof that they were used and treasured.

No one I know uses a Rolodex anymore. Now our contacts are scattered on various media, social and personal. Are we more connected now than we were then? The funny thing is, I don’t think we are.

What Light Reveals

What Light Reveals

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Already the sky is lightening. The birds — not just the first, brave one, but a chorus of them by now — are making dawn an aural as well as visual event.

I revel in the extra light — and the warmth and humidity that go along with them. But it struck me the other day that early mornings this time of year resemble a public beach at low tide. The waves pull back to reveal not just a whelk or a sand dollar, but a sandwich wrapper and a bottle cap. The flotsam of the day, that which is better left hidden.

Early light shows us the dog walker in pajamas, the late-arriving teen, the neighbor dashing out in robe and slippers to scoop up the morning paper. It shows us the blurred eyes of the commuters; in fact, it makes our fellow passengers on the platform more individual and real because we see them as more than just vague shapes.

I have this thought every year, appreciating the mercy of darkness, its absolution. Some morning duties — even and including the trip to work — are best done under its cover.

The Transcriptionist

The Transcriptionist

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My work these days calls for lots of interviewing — which in turn entails plenty of transcribing. While I’ve adapted to many new technologies, my taping equipment is decidedly non-digital.  I transcribe interviews as I always have, slowly and labor intensively, with many hits of “pause” and “rewind.”

This gives me time to ruminate on the human voice, on the pitch and timbre of it, and mostly on the pace of it.

Some reflective souls, bless their hearts, speak so slowly that my typing can keep up with them. Those conversations are a cinch to get down on paper.  Other subjects — I call them fast-talkers — are fun to interview but a nightmare to transcribe. They chatter, they enthuse, they barely pause. An hour with them takes four or five hours to capture.

Best of all are the conversations that seem opaque in real time but in transcription reveal a deeper, richer undertone. Makes me wish for a more all-encompassing rewind button — a replay for life, I guess you’d say. What would I choose to listen to again?

Sunday Visits

Sunday Visits

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Old-fashioned Sunday afternoons were for visiting. First there was church, then Sunday dinner — a heavy, midday repast (not brunch) — then chatting in the living room or parlor.

Even in memory, these childhood Sundays are interminable. Now I realize what they were for.

Yesterday I spent four hours on the phone. I talked with my mother, my sister, my daughter and my friend. The Sunday phone call is the modern equivalent of the Sunday visit. Because family and friends are far flung, the receiver (and now the smart phone) is the portal of togetherness. It is not ideal, but it is essential.

“A culture wise in love’s ways would understand a relationship’s demand for time,” says Thomas Lewis, M.D., and coauthors in A General Theory of Love. “Americans have grown used to the efficiencies of modern life … why should relationships be any different? Shouldn’t we be able to compress them into less time than they took in the old days? … The unequivocal limbic no takes our culture by surprise.”

So even though I “didn’t get much done” yesterday, I remind myself that there are no shortcuts to closeness. False starts, conversations that go nowhere, simply being available in case a conversation might happen — these are the currency of intimacy.

Contagious

Contagious

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No masks yet; we haven’t come to that. But I flinch from my Metro seatmate, who hacks his way through the long ride in from Vienna. And I touch as little as possible, pressing a glove, or a sleeve or a paper towel into duty.

At church they announced a temporary hiatus of the common cup (a bizarre tradition anyway; other faiths, with their individual thimbles of wine, are more rational about this) and asked us to respect those who choose not to shake hands during the sign of peace.

In my pew no one shook hands. Was everyone sick? Did everyone think I was sick? Or was this the excuse we’ve all been waiting for? A retreat into private prayer.

Cold and flu season makes one thing clear: non-communication is contagious.