put_pen_to_paper ovenbird More and more I recognize that if I want to keep something I need to give it a physical container in which to live. I’ve lost so much. Hundreds of emails, long chains of conversation shared over whatever instant messaging app ruled the day, my own writing, journal entries that only ever existed on an ancient floppy disk and never found their way to an external hard drive. I no longer feel comfortable risking my memory to digital caretakers. I have equipped myself with fountain pens and glass jars of ink, luxurious notebooks with paper that lets the ink pool on the surface. All I have left is what I’ve committed to paper. And it’s not nearly enough. I won’t make the same mistake again. Each month I print the words I’ve given to this red place and put them to bed in a kraft paper folder, neatly labeled with the current year. I reacquaint myself with the mail, buy a bronze seal and wax to hold my letters closed. I like the way it feels to watch my mind flow onto the page, my handwriting barely changed in all these decades. Last year I gave my daughter a diary for her birthday. Yesterday she came to find me and read her most recent entry, a detailed examination of a friendship that has grown thorns. “Why do you write so much down if you never want anyone to read it?” My husband asked this morning. “Because I can’t understand myself any other way,” I said. I teach my daughter to find herself on the page. This is a radical act. The world would like us to look through an artificial mind and have it tell us what we see. I hoard my pens as if they are the most important tool of resistance. And they are. 260626 what's it to you? who go blather from