My friend Flossie writes: The young man at my store is continually razzed by the girls who constitute the rest of the staff, leaving aside the manager, who's also the owner, and me (the improvident), but he takes himself very serious and methodical, and all the mockery slides off his back. He came over to me the other day what I was reading, Peter Unger's Empty Ideas as it happens, but when I started to talk about the uselessness of philosophy, he asked if I could give him some advice.
Jeff's a shortish, roundish young man with a cute little goatee and ambitions of law school or business school or something else professional. His question: what would be a good paper on which to write a note to his girl friend? You know we have lots of kinds of papers, hand made, glossy, holographic, everything. I'm still learning the vast range of what qualifies as paper.
What's the message, I asked. It's not the message, he said, it's the mediium. We're going to have an exchange and I want the paper to be something we both can write on that conveys the idea of let's say affection without quickly becoming annoying. I intend to keep hers to me as a record of our relationship.
And she'll keep yours? I asked. What are you planning, a long range romance like John and Abigail Adams?
No, No, he replied. She lives in Charlestown, very close. But she's very literary and so am I, so we thought we'd have a nineteen century-style of affair, if that's what it grows into.
I can't see any of our colleagues quite as deliberate and old--fashioned as that, I said. He looked in the direction of the counter and uttered a quick 'ha'.
Well, will you be writing with quills?
Don't you mock me too, he pleaded. It's tiresome.
So I suggested some handmade papers with leaves or plant material from each of the four seasons in turn pressed into it, thick felt-like paper with subtle natural coloring. That way, I said, you can feel the changes of the year as you record and trade your thoughts.
Maybe, he said, fingering the paper as he looked up and out.
I've never heard of it being done this way before, I said.
Well, Diane's always thinking of things that surprise me, he said.
No, she doesn't seem at all ordinary from what you say, I replied.
Most women in their forties are pretty predictable in their ways, he said, but not her.
Forties? Oh, to be 20 years younger, I thought.
Jeff's a shortish, roundish young man with a cute little goatee and ambitions of law school or business school or something else professional. His question: what would be a good paper on which to write a note to his girl friend? You know we have lots of kinds of papers, hand made, glossy, holographic, everything. I'm still learning the vast range of what qualifies as paper.
What's the message, I asked. It's not the message, he said, it's the mediium. We're going to have an exchange and I want the paper to be something we both can write on that conveys the idea of let's say affection without quickly becoming annoying. I intend to keep hers to me as a record of our relationship.
And she'll keep yours? I asked. What are you planning, a long range romance like John and Abigail Adams?
No, No, he replied. She lives in Charlestown, very close. But she's very literary and so am I, so we thought we'd have a nineteen century-style of affair, if that's what it grows into.
I can't see any of our colleagues quite as deliberate and old--fashioned as that, I said. He looked in the direction of the counter and uttered a quick 'ha'.
Well, will you be writing with quills?
Don't you mock me too, he pleaded. It's tiresome.
So I suggested some handmade papers with leaves or plant material from each of the four seasons in turn pressed into it, thick felt-like paper with subtle natural coloring. That way, I said, you can feel the changes of the year as you record and trade your thoughts.
Maybe, he said, fingering the paper as he looked up and out.
I've never heard of it being done this way before, I said.
Well, Diane's always thinking of things that surprise me, he said.
No, she doesn't seem at all ordinary from what you say, I replied.
Most women in their forties are pretty predictable in their ways, he said, but not her.
Forties? Oh, to be 20 years younger, I thought.
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