All We've Got Left

The exchange of letters between friends and intimates no longer being a thing possile for humanity, we limp along with the next best things, a pastiche of emails, texts, social media posts, and above all, the last tool we have to effectively communicate one person to another, which is the telephone. I have noticed that the last friends I had, who gave a hoot whether I was still alive, tended to catch up with me with calling me on the phone. It is awkward for me to admit how much I now treasure phone calls, because I was on the early edge of pathological phone avoiders, preferring text the same way the young generations now do, almost a stereotype. I have memories of vivid phone calls recently. I have screamed at over the phone, by people who inferred my ideologies, and stood with zipped list while I listened to the pleas of friends who honest-to-god believed I had become a baddie out of 1930s Germany. I now realize the depth of their anguish. They actually freaking believed all that bullshit. But I loved the human connection, the warm greeting, even if it devolves into agry screaming. In one case, sitting on the beach of Lake Tahoe right after the 2020 election, 

I was able to talk my friend down of the ledge of bewildered rage and confusion. In another case, a friend used the amicable endings of our strained phone calls---which he was alway the one to incite---to lie in wait for me to see visit him in person at his home, at which time he lowered the boom on me, and we haven't really spoken since. I don't expect to see his What's App number pop up again. I think he is done. I forgive him   Nevertheless we had good phone calls for a spell, when I needed that. Now, when I dream of reconciliation with long-lost friends, I sometimes wish for a surprise email, as I did from Janusz, after we fell out of the habit of writing to each other years ago. We don't call each other. Instead I went to visit him in Poland. Otherwise, phone it must be. 

 Sadly, however, even our phone calls these days are diminished, for all of us who still use the phone. They have effectively abolished analog phone lines, by which the electromagnetic representation of the human voice and other sounds was captured in a travelling wave form . Among other things, this allowed for true duplex communication---the sound could travel both directions at once down the copper wires. You could hear each other, even as you both spoke. You could hear silences, and sighs. You are no longer allowed any of this. The human voice is reduced to 1s and 0s, and the sound of one party tramples on another. We effect clumsy attempts to communicate important things, as if we are back in the time of Meet Me in St. Louis, half-yelling over the wall phone long distance.  One must confirm that one was heard. Mostbrutually, one begins to open up, speaking from the heart, and one goes on a two-minute monologue sharing something of great value that was not shared before, maybe to another human being. And one then realizes the call has been dead for some amount of time. 

Downright inhuman. But it's all we've got left.