nostalgia


 NOSTALGIA

Late night and early morning, appropriate times for clouds of nostalgia to make a slow progress through the mind, leaving in their wake the non-physical pains of loss and the lost in our 21st century: the art of writing letters.



Reading Selected Letters of Langston Hughes (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013), edited by Arnold Rampersad and David Roessel with Christa Fratantoro, induces nostalgia for the quality of ink, the motions of penmanship, the texture of paper, the weight of the pen, the rhythm  and labor of typing.

I remember the moods the editors attribute to Hughes's letters ----"lyrical, romantic, flirtatious, ironical, sardonic, allusive, casual, objective, or businesslike" (xiii) shaped communication with relatives, friends, associates, and strangers.  The semi-privacy of the letter encouraged robust instances of  intimacy and honesty among people which is thin and lukewarm when they are transmitted by email, Facebook messages or  phone text-messages, and tweet.



To minimize pain, I may once again cultivate the art of writing letters.



Jerry W. Ward, Jr.                            May 10, 2019

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