Romantic with a Capital "R"

I have a doppelganger, a strange and estranged doppelganger. One time I said, "I'm a Romantic, but I'm not romantic." He replied, "you mean, in that train travel and postage stamp way--not in that flowers and chocolate way. Romantic with a capital 'r.'" "Yes, exactly!" I was relieved he understood.

It all makes it fairly easy to please me--I have a husband who's more "r"omantic (luckily, in an effortless, not contrived, way) than I am, so I'm never disappointed in my marriage as some (many?) women are.

However, when it comes to "R"omance, I'm always mourning the loss of it in our society. I'm a fan of postcards, handwritten letters, artifacts/tangible objects, snail mail, used/vintage books, CDs with artwork in the booklets, rocks, leaves, sticks, feathers, bookshelves and photos. I'm not such a fan of digital files-easily produced, dispatched, modified, deleted, forgotten.

Of course, I recognize the utility, practicality, and convenience of technology. I'm not anti-technology; however, I find it preferable to try to preserve some sense of individualism in how we consume media and correspondence. When I was in Mongolia, it was this sense that drove me to send handwritten letters on local paper, using Mongolian stamps, sometimes with a Mongolian bill enclosed as a tangible piece of the place. But if any of the recipients preferred one of these letters to a standard email (all of which looks the same) from the unreliable, slow, sole computer in Bayangol, none commented. I still love to send and receive letters in this way. I have kept, nearly 10 years later, the letters a friend sent me from his Peace Corps assignment in Cameroon. I've kept postcards from faraway places, with defunct stamps, bundled in my desk drawer. The emails, on the other hand, from various people's vacations and stints abroad--they are forgotten and haven't been so much as glanced at since they were read for the first and only time. There's something about seeing a person's handwriting, the pen and paper and envelope and stamp that they chose, that I think reflects upon them and the relationship in a way that the billionth gmail or yahoo message cannot possibly.

Recently, a friend (who also writes letters) and I engaged in a Romantic endeavor: sitting in Anaba Tea Room and chatting for a couple hours over slowly-imbibed cups of tea. One of the things we talked about was whether technology is good/better simply because it's new, whether change is always good, and whether change should be made just for change's sake. US-style capitalism, with planned obsolesence and the creation of desire for "newness" that feeds our consumer economy, seems to have spilled into our outlook on how we learn about and share our our experiences of the world as well.

One of the products we discussed was the e-reader. I can certainly see how an e-reader would be convenient for travel, as well as for magazine subscriptions and the like. But as a bibliophile who is not only enraptured with the act of reading, but the books themselves, the Kindle, Nook, Sony E-Reader, or iPad just doesn't cut it for me. My friend agreed with me: "at the end of the day," he said, "it's stil just pixels on a screen." I know that the e-reader has done its best, thus far, to replicate the reading experience. You can still get cover art; you can even design a "bookmark." You can check out, return, and "lend" books to other e-reader devices.

But still, it comes down to the weight of things. I like the weight of a book in my hand. I have held and paged on kindles and nooks, and it's the same dead weight for every book or magazine you could possibly download. The weight of a book is part of my reading experience. How yellowed the pages are--part of my reading experience. My bookmark collection (gathered and gifted from all over the world, from people whom I remember fondly when I touch and examine these bookmarks) is irreplaceable. To walk into our family's office and be surrounded by my books on bookshelves all around--this matters to me. To be able to take one off the shelf and page through it, as opposed to hitting the same button on an e-reader over and over again--this matters to me.

The weight of things also reminds me to exercise restraint. Never a person to desire being bound by excessive things, the weight of things matters to me as a symbol of how much clutter might be in my life. What does it mean when we have endless digital space to horde and forget about? How do we relinquish attachment to the meaningless items in our collection then?

The issue of Romance came up in the past couple days again, which is why I write this. Some of my friends don't want actual books this year--they would prefer a gift certificate or gift e-book for their e-reader instead. Which, if that's what they want, I guess I will have to indulge. However, it once again makes me mourn the loss of the weight of the book I would give them, the act of paging through it or wrapping it or sending it through the mail, the loss of the handwritten card I would attach to it.