First, I’ll tell you about the thing I did not do: I did not send a letter to my grandmother’s English cousin Beryl, who lives in Birmingham, the last, to my knowledge, of the English family that the American side of the family still actively keeps in touch with. Well, it’s just my grandmother that keeps in touch, but I’ve been thinking lately that I should write a letter introducing myself, and reestablish the epistolary practice that kept the ocean-sides of this family in conversation with each other through the better half of the twentieth century.
But I did not do this, not yet, because a letter—a letter like that—takes me a long time to write.
What I did do, have done, for the past twenty-four hours, is track all of my sendings (you’ll see it wasn’t hard to do). In a way, though a letter to Beryl would be more lyrical, more full of history and intention, I’m more interested in this twenty-four hour accumulation. It’s the slight exception—for instance, I sent three pieces of mail yesterday, two having to do with taxes, one an author-publisher agreement for a lit journal, all three things sent at the behest of others and so not an entirely accurate representation of my everyday networks—but it demonstrates well the various kinds of information I send (and, presumably, receive) and by what channels on a daily basis.
The tally:
3 pieces of snail mail: 1 to Indiana, 2 to Hammond, NY.
8 text messages: to 2 different people, accounting for 3 separate conversations. (I assume this number is far lower than the number of texts most of you sent in the last 24 hours. I’m not much for texting.)
5 emails sent from Gmail: to 2 different recipients. Scanned attachments of a 1099 and a 1098 accompanied 1 of these conversations (is it tax season or is it tax season). I sent the other email to a professor.
3 emails sent from Pitt webmail: replies to 3 different people, all students, though not all current students.
And that’s it. Other possible sendings that might have taken place in a different 24 hours: a Facebook message and/or group email to friends from far and away making wedding travel plans (to do); a postcard to a poet friend somewhere in the mountains around Missoula, MT (to do); a catch-up email to another poet friend living in Portland, OR (to do); several replies to people from the North Country emailing with interest regarding the public memory project (for the time being, I’m caught up); 3 emails to professors that I’ve been meaning to set up meetings with for weeks now (to do, to do, to do); and that letter to Beryl (someday—soon).
