A handwritten letter says what nothing else can,

A handwritten letter offers something deeper than what we’ve become accustomed to in this era of instant communication.

Yes, we tap out quick missives in reply to today’s email and text messages. We respond, with a sentence or series of words, to a social media post, but it is always more reaction than interaction.

The width and breadth of a traditional handwritten letter goes deeper and wider. A few lines, a couple of pages, perhaps a bit of history or update on a current reality; each letter of every word contains something you just don’t get from an email.

Correspondence — communication in handwritten form — is to be appreciated and respected for exactly what it is; a truthful rendering on a person’s thoughts, feelings, or theories. There is a certain intimacy involved in the inherent honesty of a letter.

You write differently, perhaps more truthfully, when you commit words to a page by pen or pencil. You forgo the convenience of a keyboard and bypass the spellcheck and cut-and-paste familiarity of this virtual realm we live in.

You tell the story of an adventure, or future plans, in greater detail when you write by hand. Between the salutation and the sign-off, the words on the page take on a life of their own. There is a change in the tense, the texture, and the tone of how, and what, we write.

Outside of the eraser on a pencil (the original word processor) which allows you to catch the occasional error or slightly modify a sentence, words land on the page as you think and as you go.

You read differently, more observantly, when you look over the pages of a handwritten letter. The brain, overly-accustomed to the increased amount of text we consume in a single day, has to process the information in what has become an unfamiliar manner.

The eyes register the information more keenly — with less physical strain on the eyeball than what is required to read off an illuminated screen — and follow each curve and line of every letter, at times struggling with the varied uniformity of each person’s interpretation of the alphabet. It can be a challenge to read someone else’s handwriting, but there is an appreciation that another human being took the time to mindfully communicate.

A handwritten letter takes time. Thoughts captured on paper one day could take days or weeks to arrive at the intended destination. There is not the immediacy of electronic communication, but there is not the need.

A handwritten letter is timeless.

 

        Confused by what is important,
   outside of the deception,
   outside of the party lines,
          guided by misplaced trust.
  We have become
disciples of those with
   as many faces
        as hands.
    Did you know
             the ramifications of what they’re
        saying or the power
        they have?
                           Politics.
I wonder what is important
      outside of the violence
      outside of the gleaming excesses.
          I don’t think this world
   needs to hear more political apologies
every single day.
  We all lead hectic lives,
  we think – or hope – that I or anyone
can be forgiven for forgetting
     what happened when
     we trusted
leadership and looking forward.
        No accountability.
     We do not
  blame – or fault – you, I or anyone
trapped by this contagion, this sin
   brought on
     by ego and ignorance.
        Politics. The evil within.

 

© 2019 j.g. lewis

We seek shelter, a leafy tree,
tenement steps, even pressing closer
to a random building
in hopes we may be spared.
                  It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
Ignoring the signs, we forget the distinction
between lightning and thunder,
not counting the seconds between,
or caring.
Overcast, overcome with the immediacy
of the moment. Summer weather
a reminder of the turmoil we live with,
                              or clouds we live under.
A day as promising as a politician’s smile,
just as deceiving. Unnoticed, but not
unexpected. Forced,
by chance, to deal with inclement emotions
and torrential pain. Crushing humidity,
atmospheric pressure bucking
under its own weight. Our thoughts
hold us hostage.
                        Days rarely go as planned.
Night will come, as surely as our breath.
Here we are, huddled with strangers,
waiting out another storm.

© 2019 j.g. lewis

What ever happened to
the peace and love we spoke of,
decades before? Our realism of idealism
before capitalism; humanity above profit.
Conscious thought. Truth.
Was this a concept
within a dream, altered by greed
and get-rich-schemes
that became the way of the world.
Do we know how it happened?
Can we understand? Why?
Each generation judges those before,
every generation knows a state of war.
This reality becomes hard
when the violence is right there
in your backyard. Fact.
Something is not the same.
We were young once. Age
now testimony to where we have been,
what have we witnessed, and
how we have failed those
who shall follow. Evolution.
How do we speak of freedom?
Can we hold a stranger’s hand?
Are weather-beaten symbols and
time-ravaged slogans relevant any more?
Honesty. Do we remember
how to make love, not war?

© 2019 j.g. lewis

It is not surprising the 50th anniversary of Woodstock was cancelled late last week. The venue, and the line-up of performers, had changed several times and there seemed to be little enthusiasm over the event.

Woodstock 50 was to be a celebration of the original event held August 15-18, 1969 on farmland in upstate New York. Billed as An Aquarian Exposition; 3 Days of Peace & Music, an audience of more than 400,000 converged on the site and took in acts like Santana, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, and Jimi Hendrix.

It was a pivotal moment in world history — less than a month after the U.S put a man on the Moon — that forged a new attitude among a generation seeking change.

But the world has changed too much to allow an event like that to ever happen again.

Financial backers pulled out of Woodstock 50. Among other things, I suspect nobody was willing to accept the liability for that many people attending a single event.

In light of the epidemic of mass shootings over the past few years, cancelling Woodstock 50 was the right thing to. It doesn’t take much to remember the deadliest mass shooting in the U.S. committed by an individual happened at a music festival. On October 1, 2017, a heavily-armed lone shooter killed 58 people, and wounded more than 400, in Las Vegas.

A mass shooting tales place every single day in the U.S.; you cannot even go to WalMart for groceries without fear of being gunned down. Really, who would want to take a chance on going to a multi-day concert with hundreds of thousands of people?

In the United States of America this year, there have been more mass shootings than days. There were 323 mass shootings in 2018, and 343 in 2017. There is a debate between sources as to whether a “mass shooting” constitutes 3 or more, or 4 or more, people shot and killed in one incident. The statistics are alarming.

Mass shootings are an American crisis. The country leads the developed world in gun violence, and no other nation has these types of shootings to this degree.

As much as America could use some sort of celebration of peace and love, it obviously doesn’t deserve it. There is too much violence and political posturing, and the top-down hatred spills out across gender, race and party lines.

When will the president face the music?

© 2019 j.g. lewis