An etherealgirl's Adventures in Cyberland

Friday, December 16, 2005

a time-honoured tradition: the holiday card

Astrologer extraordinaire April Elliot Kent has another timely essay posted at her site; all about the old-fashioned way of communicating, through my favourite vehicle, the written word.

She and I both share Gemini Moons so it was no surprise to me that I could relate totally to this:

There's a slow grace to communicating by mail that appeals to me. Oddly, for a person born when the Moon was in Gemini, I dislike the telephone. Well, that’s not exactly true -- I do dislike answering the phone or placing a phone call, but once I’m engaged in a conversation with someone I like, I can yammer away for a pretty long time. Yet the telephone has an immediacy that is a bit of an imposition. If you call for a nice chat at the precise moment that I’m lashing out in an existential premenstrual fury, it can be an awkward moment for both of us. Owing to unfortunate timing, I can’t be the gentle friend you hoped you’d find and that I desperately want to be -- I’m too involved in my own little shrewish drama. Alternately, when I pick up the phone to call you, I worry that I’m interrupting your only free afternoon in a month, or at the exact moment when you would rather/need to be doing about fifty other things from your ever-burgeoning To Do list, and that you’re just too nice to tell me to shove off. Between the timing thing and the lack of opportunity to formulate soulful insights or snappy responses, the phone is kind of brutal, the freeway approach to communication: direct and expedient, but the likelihood of a sort of telecommunicative multi-car pileup gives one pause.


I didn't realize it was an oddity for a Gemini Moon, but I must confess that for the most part I absolutely loathe the telephone (don't even have a cell phone) and avoid placing calls almost as much as I avoid answering one. Not surprisingly, I adore the answering machine and its screening capabilities. I suppose the reason I don't relish phone calls is because they generally are of the telemarketing kind.

But like April, I find written communication, especially the art of letter writing to be a revered and sorely lamented long lost art. It is one of the saddest casualties of modern life that I can think of. Sometimes instant gratification is simply neither.

Still, my baby is going to be a couple of thousand miles away from me this holiday, so you can be sure that I'm going to be unusually grateful to the telephone for the next few weeks... my one communication lifeline to bridge the distance between my one and only kiddo and me. It's also the time of year I'm grateful for being able to talk with my parents who are so often at their home while we are at our home during the holidays. :-( Missing them all right now... so very much....

Gotta get moving so we can grab some breakfast and... gulp... head out to the airport soon...

Posted by etherealfire :: 4:18 AM :: 0 Comments:

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