On correspondence online

With the letter from 6/4/07, “Showers,” posted in scanned, digitized form to Midwest Home,  I’ve now come around to my original intent – namely, getting my original correspondence, in original form, into this vast public forum.

 And I’ve now worked three or four months in a real library (a bit of a smaller public forum).

And right about the same time I realized that, even though I love books and newspaper and paper and mail and printing, on the internet you don’t have to put any of those back after using them and you don’t have to worry about physical space to nearly the same measure, I also scanned those two pages to my dear friend Po, quite happily, to place viewable on Midwest Home. I didn’t think what a shame it was that the two other readers of this blog won’t receive paper copies themselves. I didn’t particularly feel like I was violating the sanctity of correspondence: paper being imprinted upon and sealed, that sealed container passing over miles of country and arriving, to be opened only by the intended recipient (punishable by federal law).

 In fact I was excited about the scanner’s catching the detail of the type: the texture of the ribbon and the red ink mixed through (probably rubbed off the typewriter itself, from many years ago, onto the ribbon I installed upside-down). I was sad about it scanning a little crooked, and cutting some of the page off. I wanted it to work, and felt good about how it did work.

And until this past week I’d remained staunchly against the eradication of the brick and mortar library. Of course, without universal access to the internet, such big talk should never go further. And, of course, if I can ever find those horrible eduational sci-fi thrillers we watched in eighth grade about the future earth, invaded by robots, with only six young students left to search out the answers in buried, abandoned libraries, I might change my position again.

But… maybe, just maybe, I’m ready to move along quietly into the future. With my record player and typewriters in tow.

I’ll have to come back to this one… I have more books to shelve at the moment.