The pen is not mightier than the blog.

In a world where hand written letter are replaced with e-mails click, delete Ctrl… instant gratification…,communication is the death of distance. The thing to do is to feel the texture of the page, still white before the ink lines form, let the fluid flow into the mute amazement of a sentence, a sort of interior decoration of the mind. In aroma and texture would have made the baroness swoon lustfully! Writing pushes us deeper and higher into ourselves, words seem to come first as an impulsion from nowhere; and then pre-hension till it becomes less and less esoteric. Though I lack the rigor of a trained writer, drinking and writing was like a spiritual quest.

Deep reading or total absorption has given way to power browsing, web pages are viewed/ retained for less than a second. Working the remote while checking FB/E-mail/Blogs? Tweets/ what has happened to attention span? All this multitasking has literally altered the shape of our brains. Our massively plastic “neural pathways” will need course correction to keep up with this online life.

Quill and ink to Fountain pen, then ballpoint pen, to typewriters to word processors and we call it progress. gumastan the only people in India who still knew how to use a manual typewriter, when the pen writes its own epitaph. When I sit down to write I must remember that one does not strike an attitude in front of a mountain.

The supposedly great misery of the 21st Century is the back of time itself; or our sense of that, not a disinterested love of science and certainly not wisdom why. We devote such a huge proportion of the ingenuity & income of our societies to finding fast sways if ding things as if the final aim of mankind was to grow closer not to perfect humanity, but to a perfect lighting flash. The one commodity that is becoming scarce is the leisure to enjoy life. In the future what will work look like as we evolve into a species of laptop toting nomads roaming desolate corporate campuses and scrounging for electrical outlets to recharge our batteries.

Great conversations are seldom linear, don’t progress logically, they digress and meander all over, you can’t put complex thoughts into one line. Conversations like a good cigar takes time and people have no time. Conversations are about the ability to relax, it’s like listening to music, and you come away rejuvenated, formality kills conversation. Need a minimal amount of knowledge to have productive conversation. Internet, Blogs, and email are quickies (slam bang goodbye madam) 1994 claret,so young drinking it was like child abuse.