Face-time, not Facebook...Whoops!

Seneca was onto something, however many hundreds of years ago, when he wrote to a friend, "I never have a letter from you without the immediate feeling that we are together. For if pictures of absent friends give us pleasure, renewing our memories and relieving the pain of separation even if they cheat us with empty comfort, how much more welcome is a letter which comes to us in the very handwriting of a friend." 

I talk to my friends from home several times a week on Skype, that internet bastion of video chats, but for some strange and inexplicable reason this "face-time" simply cannot compare with a handwritten letter or postcard.  It is a mere picture, though it is admittedly one that moves and talks a la the portraits in Harry Potter.  But you can't  hug someone through a computer screen (though I did recently find out that you can send them a digital cup of coffee--or tea, if you'd like to imagine--by typing (coffee) into Skype).  

I know my preference for a letter over a Skype date is odd, especially considering that a letter has to be sent, by definition, through snail mail.  And, as the derogatory nickname indicates, post is neither the fastest nor most reliable means of communication.  Often, by the time I've received the letter, I've been informed of, discussed, and rehashed the contents several times via video conference, instant messaging, or (for those friends who are too many time zones away) Facebook messages.  

There is a slogan that State-side career centers use to encourage students to get out and network: Face-time, not Facebook.  We have, it would seem, entered the age of virtual networking.  We have social sites, like Facebook, and career sites, like LinkedIn.  There are even profession-specific sites, like Classroom 2.0 for teachers.  It is so easy to send an email, Facebook message, or IM, who needs to pick up the phone or, God-forbid, get together for coffee.  We can discuss everything--face-to-face--right from the comfort of our own homes via video chat applications like Skype.  

The other day, my friend Skyped me from his room, just a short walk from my apartment here in Glasgow.  I refused the call.  When he asked why, I explained that I found the concept of video conferencing while living in the same city more than slightly absurd.  Apparently, he did not.  

Is this what my generation can look forward to in the future?  Virtual friendships measured by the amount of times you post to someone's Facebook wall or comment on their recent "activity?" (If you can call writing responses to uploaded photos or comments about recently acquired "friends" activity.  Certainly, activity was involved in the taking of the photos or the making of the friend, but shouldn't we be more interested in sitting down to tea--or over a pizza--to discuss our lives, instead of stalking pictures and videos and wall-to-walls on Facebook while sitting alone in our rooms?)

Because of this, even though I talk to my friends quite frequently on the internet and enjoy our conversations immensely, I was ecstatic to receive a package in the mail from one of my best friends and roommates back home.  In the package I found a small figurine--a miniature garden gnome, complete with suitcase in hand--and postcards from Italy, Spain, and El Salvador.  That little gnome and the letters that accompanied him meant more to me than I can express in words.  I suppose, in an effort to convey his meaning, I should explain why my friends would send me a gnome in the first place.

(Note: This is not a copyright infringement.  We were unaware until I mentioned the gnome to some of my friends here that our plan very closely resembled the plot of Amelie, albeit minus the stealing of the gnome--we bought and legitimately own ours.)

November-December '08--Ashley, Catherine, Corinne, and I were busily preparing for the end of the semester, but decided that decorating our apartment for Christmas was a necessary and productive use of our time.  One day, Catherine brought home a storage container of decorations her boss had given her.  As poor college students, we weren't about to complain (after all, our Christmas tree was bequeathed to us by my parents, who had decided to down-size and get one of those fancy pre-lit trees).  In the box, mixed in with an eclectic assortment of Christmas and winter decorations was, of all things, a garden gnome.  Somehow or another, it quickly became tradition to hide the gnome around the apartment.  He would show up in the oddest places--the refrigerator, the shower, under the couch cushion.  Whoever found the gnome had to re-hide it.  Who knew that our pranks would become so important to us just a few months down the road?  

Before we all left to begin our adventures abroad, Ashley bought a miniature gnome and included it with Catherine's birthday present--complete with instructions to take it with her to Rome, then send it on to someone else after a few weeks.  By the time I opened my package on January 27, that figurine was one well-traveled little gnome.  He'd been to Rome, El Salvador, Spain, back to the States and, finally, to Scotland.  Soon he will be on his way again, another letter added to the mix.  (But not before he travels to Paris with me next weekend...how could I ever forgive myself if the gnome had come so far, only to miss one of the must-see cities of Europe?)

Though the gnome represents, in some convoluted sort of way, the friendship between the four of us, it is the letters/postcards that really matter.  For these are written in our own hands.  They are not the impersonal type font of the internet, nor the pixelated video conference screens.  These little slips of paper are not just the "empty comfort" of pictures and quick catch-me-up IM conversations.  When you can't just get together for coffee because there's something inconvenient, like (oh, I don't know) an ocean, between you and your friend, letters are the next best thing.  Letters are not just a series of zeros and ones that somehow (the technology is quite beyond my limited understanding, I just know it works) manage to travel across vast distances and reform themselves into a language that the everyday internet user can understand.  The sentences written on a piece of notebook paper, then mailed halfway across the world, are never anything other than the words your friend wrote to you.  They are never computed and transmitted; they arrive in your hands exactly as they left those of your friend.

Besides this, handwriting tells you what standardized type-face never could.  Were they agitated when they wrote to you? Hurried? Happy?  Calm?  Can you tell what mood I'm in from the font on this blog?  Of course not.  Depending on how well you know me, you might be able to glean an inkling of my mood, but it probably won't be easy (especially since my mood doesn't match the tone of this post in the slightest). 

To save you the trouble, I'll say no more than: It's sunny today in Glasgow (and this is, miracle of miracles, going on day three).  What mood do you think I'm in?