the 'value' part

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Yesterday, I wanted to send an email to Tom Doyle, a fellow who had done what I considered to be a knock-out video interview on the topic of Vatican sexual abuse. Besides my accolades, I wanted to ask a question. But I couldn't find an email address on the Internet, so I sent my letter to another guy who seemed to be hip-deep in the topic with a request to forward the note. Inside of ten minutes, I had a return email from the fellow I asked. He said Doyle was in Europe at the moment, but that he had forwarded my letter.

Bingo! Just like that! From here to California to Europe. It was magical from the old-fart arena in which I live. If I had tried to do that in the distant past, the whole operation would have taken a matter of days, if not weeks. Now, things were settled before the morning was out. How wonderful. How effective. This was no-kidding-around progress in terms of instant gratification.

And yet there was something flavorless about it. Something felt as if it were missing. It was perfect in one sense and yet it also felt flawed. Slow had turned to fast and yet the speed seemed to take the humanity, the subtle coloration of affection and personality out of the equation. It felt a little like the old observation, "S/he knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."

The je-ne-sais-quoi element appeared to me in an old envelope I had once framed and still hangs on the bedroom wall. It was a letter sent to me by an actor whose apartment I had lived in while he was on tour. I had flunked out of a Zen monastery, returned to New York, had no where to live, and the actor was willing to let me stay for free in return for some painting and carpentry chores. And while he was on the road, every once in a while he would send me letters detailing what, I can't remember. Perhaps he just wanted to remind me not to trash the place. We were not precisely friends, but since I was living in his digs, we were something more than acquaintances. He was a guy who was edgy and agitated in the hungry-actor mode ... longing to succeed and yet entirely unsure that he could ... a ballsy, neurotic existence. And his letters often seemed to posit his longing to be recognized for his artful abilities.

So here is the envelope of one of his letters:

Slower than an email by days and days and yet giving off a flavor and richness no email could ever match. Maybe it was phony-baloney, maybe self-aggrandizing, maybe just joyful ... whatever it was, there was a tale to tell before the envelope was ever opened. And the same is true of any other hand-addressed envelope ... which is probably one reason that junk-mailers have found addressing devices that look as if someone actually wrote them.

You can't take it to the bank, but, for whatever brief moment, you can take it to (the indefinable) heart.
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