Writing

What is writing to me? Oxygen for my mind, as simple as that. A vital need. Then maybe, an aestethic ambition.

At my desk in the office I write rhymes, short stories, acrostics…whatever pops into my mind. Need to share? Also. A wish to be liked? Maybe. It’s a bit of a clown syndrome, i only share anything falling within the definition of “ironic”. All other reflections, streams of (un)consciousness, poems and confessions, whatever has to do with my innermost feelings, is confined to my hard disk, and sometimes experience the thrill of a journey into the wild thanks to a usb pendrive.

I like words: they look so harmless, as if they were nothing but mere conventions. They are ephemeral, and yet (it has been known for millennia or even more) they are the most dangerous weapons, what supposedly makes us more sophisticated than other living beings, and the first remarkable achievement of a baby. With words one can do nearly everything, as it is well known that things are easier said than done.

I write about everything, and on everything, as bringing a notepad wherever I go is only a good intention I keep repeating to myself. Eventually, born in the last, most prosaic  bit of the 20th century, I end up typing all my scribbles, giving them a universally intelligible look. This happens, of course, only when I remember my mum’s wise advise to check the pockets before throwing my jeans into the washing machine.   

A couple of months ago, after a furtive escape from a wedding celebration, I filled with notes every square cm of the elegant card with the schedule of the whole church ceremony, including songs, Bible quotes and wishes. I forgot how I wangled the stub of a pencil, after all I’ve only recently found the card, fully covered in signs I can barely read by now. The Elbe peacefully stretched in front of me, and a nearly summer sun glued to my skin the dress I got for the occasion. Someone went looking for me, but nobody thought I’d venture into the little wood surrounding the fairy-tale castle, testing the heels I got for 15E at the Turkish market.

In 3 weeks I’m leaving my company, but I'd rather say my desk, for which I have developed more affection than for the whole other corporate gadgets, buildings or strategies. Maybe someone will  carefully clean up the place I’ve been sitting at for nearly an year, and scrape the circle my glass (always the same) left next to thekeyboard. I have no clue if and when someone will take over my position, comfortably overlooking *°@+[censored] and opposite to the entry, a good excuse indeed not to welcome colleagues with a beaming smile at 8.30 every morning. Maybe some of my crap will remain: a "Our Father" and a“Everyday I love you less and less” reviewed, a necrologies, a new born announcement, a rebus. C. collected all the notes I sent her and put them in an envelope.

What are words? I am not sure they’re less volatile once taken down. I think the thrill of getting things down black on white is over. No more amanuensis wearing their eyes off at the dim candlelight, not even broken typewriters running out of ink.

I’ve never understood how a fax machine works. I keep asking for explanations, and keep giving the machine a blank stare: I just can’t grasp its functioning. 

I remember how excited I was to get penfriends once I started studying English, then my letters exchange with J, a German friend I could see only every once in a while. I told her we should always and only write eachother on paper: squared paper, letter paper, colored paper. In some years, the 60 c spent on the stamps would have enabled someone to unveil a relic, tactically feeling the past.

After a while, e-mail succeeded in inverse ratio to our mutual sight power and time availability.

Nonetheless, I still havequite a fetish love for paper. It is like talking to someone in person or on the phone. On the phone one misses the imperceptible gestures and expressions, the smell. Paper whispers how hastily someone wrote, if he carefully chose his piece of paper or frantically grabbed whatever he found. Sometimes one starts writing in a colour and then the biro dies in between, in some rare, fortunate cases, a stain reveals if the writer has been drinking, eating, or even crying over his lines. Writing implies a physical effort, more than typing:  my hand muscles went often numb for writing too much in one go, it is my typical "writing-rush-cramp". I wonder how many people nowadays write more than just their signature and some standard lines on postcards (if I-phone pix do not replace them at all).

I feel as wrinkled as a letter left in the sun, the ink fading away.

Reading implies a physical effort, too. There is not such an option as “search for keywords”, nor one can read a neat Arial 10 font. Readers have to navigate through crossing outs (ideally trying to find out what they conceal), typos (hand writers do not have automatic correction upon language recognition), bad handwriting due to tiredness. I always start off with a decent handwriting, and end up with spiders crawling across the page.

Handwriting evolves with us, following our manual skills, our age, our calluses even. Some write with long nails, others wearing bracelets, left or right handed, some bite their nails while looking for inspiration. On second thought, some angrily delete what they wrote: some cross things out, others use smelly tippex, some others nearly pierce the paper to leave no trace of their initial words. At a certain point we uncounsciously rebel to dogmas we were taught in primary school. I would never trust someone writing me aseptically, with  no flaw and smear.

I’ve just scribbled the latest crap to be hang on the office cupboard. I can’t write straight and I think I write big. I hardly ever WRITE or read something handwritten. Even now, I am typing on my keyboard, the letters I produce do not take up any real space, so I feel no regret for an Amazonian tree falling under the blows of my merciless pen. What I produce is only a bunch of pixels, something potentially flickering simultaneously on a hundred screens. There is no secret intimacy with typing, uncountable eyes can linger  on what I write. With one click I could spam my writing around, with another click I could print it out. Neat, tamed writing. Italic, bold, colored, as I like.

Why am I writing?  No head or tail in what I am writing.

Tonight I’ll dig up a pen and a piece of paper. I only need to find a recipient (without asking for prior permission to write).

PS: as soon as I posted this, I had to annoy my Greek colleague: when do you guys first learn Latin alphabet? And what do you use it for? I entered the world of Greeklish, mostly a social network debate on how sounds like “TH” (or “CH” or “X”, there is no fix rule) should be transliterated from Greek.

And it struck me that letters might be the only (nearly) immortal tools: after all they’ve been the same for centuries, adapting to the wildest changes: the invention of printing, the decline of hardcopies, morse codes, the linguistic rape carried out by SMS.

I would love to learn a new alphabet. Or to have endless free time to get lost in this mental, empty spiral of mine, which gets real only  thanks to graphic signs, even though it’s all about pixel right now. It is only through letters that my thoughts can claim their right to exist.