Thomas Wolfe Texts young people.

(YP) “I heard you write books.”

(TW) “Hearing is a marvelous thing, it can be melded into a symphony of sounds matching the somewhat illegible scribblings on a piece of paper, or the crusty imprint of hard metal on somewhat softer paper. Those, my friends, would be written words. Unless spoken, out loud, by a person capable of deciphering what- to a two year old- would just be smudges of a certain uniformity created mechanical but thought up though a bewildering maze of chemical electrical impulse trapped in a bowl of bone.

So hearing that I wrote books is a bit of a misnomer, for if you heard words without reading them, I didn’t write them, and if you read them as I wrote them, you heard them only in your head. I believe, and believe me, I believe lots of things you do not- for you to hear I wrote books says to me, you don’t know of what I write. It is easier for me to believe you saw that I wrote books, and you misconstrued that to mean you heard. For I never spoke to you…although, there is, perhaps, a chance that my books themselves could speak to you…given both time and purpose.”

(YP) “WTF?”

(TW) “What is this? Some where, some how, in that extraordinary gift you are given, Time, you are so bereft of space to ponder, that you have reduced your reply to what passes as short hand for understanding and curiosity. No inflection indicating that you desire clarity, or perhaps, meaning to my aforementioned text to you. Have you so little time in your day that a full and honest reply, or attempt for conversation has been reduced to merely how fast you can move on from a topic…a feeling, or any sense of something deeper than just moving on to whatever catches your impulses next?

Perhaps watching babies mouths move with adult conversation will capture your attention. Generating a laugh but no real humor, for just the juxtaposition of the two versions of life, young and old, behooves a chuckle or two. Would you, I wonder, stay with the viewing long enough to understand Mark Twain. A man, who once stated that he had such a prodigious state of mind that it took him as long as a month to make it up. Did that amuse you, humor you, or keep you chuckling as you pondered the creativity it took to render all that in a single sentence.

(YP) I don’t think I would like your books. They are to long and to full of words.

(TW) In this, we agree, for my books would be formidable to someone who wants to decrease the number of words they use…or know. Words are wonderful, we have built all that you see around you every day. Even that monster of isolation you carry in your pocket…the supposed “Smart Phone” that keeps your attention like a small toddler by constantly surprising you with things that mean little or nothing, but fill the space you might have used to create words of your own. There is nothing Social about gathering in public places to ignore all but the tiny womb of FACEBOOK, Tik Tok, Instagram, that you wrap around you like a cocoon.

You send a heart emoji to express your love, whereas a person with the means of words at his disposal might write a line like this one from an anonymous Poet lost to time: “Love is born, like an infant, without any fear of death. It is the wind which bends me, or the rain which nourishes me. “

None of those words need an Education beyond Middle School, and yet, they reach - and capture- a heart. Perhaps even …a soul. Will you look at those heart emoji’s years from now, not even sure what they were posted too. I doubt that very much, for they were mere symbols without heft. Ah, but to reread: “Love is born, like an infant, without any fear of death.” Oh, my, yes you would read those words again…and again…and again.

Memories would surface, people would live and love through them, given that time waits for no one…experience, tragedy, and connection would reveal to you how the subtle changes in your, offer a more nuanced understanding of what that single line meant. For love can die, but an echo will survive. Memory will prove that your love, when it was young and fresh, had no hint that it could, and probably would…die.

Making those moments - and those words…more profound. So keep your emoji’s, they generate a wisp of a smile, a mere smoke filled moment that is blown away by simply reading the next text. Oh, sure, maybe you will get a viral number of “hits” with the same heart. Whereas the words I wrote, given to only one, will cause that smile to stay a while. Growing bigger and deeper as something as familiar of fabric moving over a young body as my hand goes around your waist, or the soft smell of her neck as you nuzzle to a Waltz that brought you closer than any hug…and in Public.

Words can color that memory so sharply that time will slip away…and slip when. No emoji has that power. Do not take the easy way out and become a pauper with words, sentences, and constructions as large as a paragraph. Start there. Perhaps, then, you can build a bridge to books as large and faraway…as mine. “

(YP) I am blocking you.